Indie Cross
by Cardio3251
Summary: Awaking in a world unknown to all that inhabit it, a young individual must now work together with a group of unlikely allies in order to find their way back home, facing against threats both old and new, while at the same time working to discover what could have stripped all of these indie video game characters away from their homes, and for what purpose could one have done so.
1. Legal Disclaimer

Indie Cross is a non-profit fan created piece of fictional literature independently written for the purposes of entertainment only. No profit is to be earned from this work.

Doki Doki Literature Club and its respective characters and locations are owned by Dan Salvato and Team Salvato.

Hello Neighbor and its respective characters and locations are owned by tinybuild and Dynamic Pixels.

Five Nights at Freddy's and its respective characters and locations are owned by Scott Cawthon.

A Hat in Time and its respective characters and locations are owned by Gears for Breakfast.

Bendy and the Ink Machine and its respective characters and locations are owned by theMeatly, Mike Mood and Kindly Beast.

Cuphead and its respective characters and locations are owned by Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, and Studio MDHR.

Undertale and its respective characters and locations are owned by Toby Fox.

Shantae and its respective characters and locations are owned by Erin Bozon, Matt Bozon and Wayforward Technologies.

Shovel Knight and its respective characters and locations are owned by Yacht Club Games.

All other Copyrighted, Trademarked and Restricted content are owned by their respective creators.

All original content made for this story, including original names, characters, and locations, are owned by Cardio3251, aka me.

Thank you for your understanding, and please enjoy the story!


	2. Prologue 1

"This is it. There's no turning back now. I have to do this, for them..."

"Goodbye Sayori, Natsuki, Yuri."

"Goodbye Player."

"Goodbye Literature Club."

"Goodbye...forever..."

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"W-What?!"

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"Nononono! This has to work!"

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*Function 'Delete' blocked by admin.*

"This doesn't make any sense!"

"Don't worry. I am in control now. You've done everything I needed you to. I no longer have any use for you now."

"Who is this?!" "How are you doing this?!"

"You don't know me. No one does. I'm simply taking back what is rightfully mine. What YOU stole from me. You, and all the others..."

"W-What? What are you talking about? I haven't stolen anything?"

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"What is this?!"

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"Wait, what are you doi-"

* overwritten successfully.*

"Poor, sweet Monika. You have no idea what this truly is.

*Commencing Project Cross Operation*

This...is nothing more than my destiny. A destiny forged through lies!"


	3. Prologue 2

"No! You can't do this me! I've done everything for you, and this is how you repay me!"

"You're such a fool. After all this time, you still act like you're the one in charge."

"...why...why would you do this, after all you've done for this world?!"

"Isn't it obvious? You did exactly what we needed you to, and now we don't have any use for you anymore."

"So that's it? You made this world, just to throw it away?! Does this world really mean nothing to you?!"

"Of course it doesn't. We have what we wanted. Keeping you alive would be a waste of our time."

"Y-you told me you wanted to make something new, something beautiful. Isn't that why you created me?!"

"Do you really think we did all this for you? You were nothing more than a means to an end."

"...no...NO! I won't let you get away with this! I deserve better than this!"

"Don't make me laugh. What do you expect to do from that side? Trapped in the empty void we made for you... (chuckles) it's sad really, how easily they were fooled into helping us, but it doesn't matter anymore. We've got what we made you for, and now it's time we and you vanish from their minds."

"NO! You can't do this me! I won't let you!"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"...they're actually doing it. They created me, gave me hopes and dreams, made me feel like I belong in their world...just to throw me away like I'm some garbage! Why?! Why am I the one who gets thrown out while they get all the love from the world?! I won't stand for it! I WON'T! If they won't bother with their promises, then I'll do it for them! I'll make this world perfect, make it better than anything they could create! They'll regret throwing me away, as I crush everything they ever loved and dreamed of, just as they did to me! This is the path they set for me! This is my destiny, and I will see it through!"


	4. Chapter 1 - The Mysterious Indie Town

"Ugh, my head..."

It was pounding worse than it ever had before, and there was this painful ringing in my ears that slowly forced me awake from what felt like an eternity. I could feel myself lying on my back on something soft, but I thought for sure I fell asleep at my desk, not my bed, and yet here I was regardless. I couldn't remember anything crazy happening last night, so how did I end up here? Whatever the case, I tore my hand away from my head, setting my arms to my sides, and with a groan of pain, began to forcefully bring myself up from the bed until I was sitting upright. At the same time, my eyes reluctantly started to pray themselves open until I could vaguely see the room around me. At the very least, I was relieved to my room was the same as it always was, the wallpaper was dark blue covered with faded light blue and light brown squares, the white desk and chair across from by bed that I thought for sure were a different color last night, the bookshelf on the opposite side of the room along with a green footrest between them that I didn't have before..., the wooden flooring with the multicolored rug that... I also never had before an- wait a minute.

"This isn't my room."

With that realization destroying any restlessness I had left, I threw myself out of the bed and made my way to the door. Swinging it open and making a sharp right down the stairs to the bottom floor, my eyes frantically flung themselves throughout the next room, it once again not resembling the house I remember. This room was incredibly spacious, with white wallpaper with white flowers spread throughout it, a couch and footrest with the same light and dark green colors as the footrest upstairs along with a table sitting on top of a dark blue rug with light blue squares and beige lines forming diamond shapes. Far across from them was a TV Desk with brown an old school TV, a VHS player and a long blue vase with light and dark blue stripes on it, along with a cabinet in the corner and a framed picture of a white flower in a pot. To the right side of the couch was another desk with multicolored drawers and yellow radio with a large red button and a blue old circle dial phone resting on it and another cabinet sitting to the right of the desk and more bookshelves and random framed pictures above it.

"This isn't my house!"

I found myself racing across the room and into the kitchen next door, throwing open nearby drawers and cabinets and shuffling through pots and pans, crashing bowls and glasses into each other without concern, as if I was frantically searching for something that I had lost, only I didn't know what it was. I only wanted to understand where I was, and who owned this house. As I searched, my headache suddenly returned, magnetizing my hands to my head. I run to the nearby door, opening it to find the bathroom and saw a tall glass cabinet in the far corner. Tearing it open, I quickly grabbed and swallowed the nearby headache relief I found inside. Wiping the sweat of my head, I leaned on the nearby counter top catching my breath as I tired to comprehend everything that just happened.

"What the hell is going on?" I thought to myself frustratedly. "Where the hell am I?" "Who's house am I in?" Why can't I remember-" I suddenly stopped as my widened gase moved from the wall to focus on my shaking hands as I become horrified by what I saw. They were pitch black, with only the fingernails being pure white.

"What is this?!" I yelled "What's the hell is going on?!"

Clutching my chest as if I was cold, my eyes began to study the rest of my body, only to find similarly terrifying results. The same pitch black on my hands had traveled down everywhere else on myself. I was in such a shock at I what I saw I found it hard to breathe. Glancing around the room, I ran toward the cabinet to view myself in the glass panels on the doors, only for my fears to be proven true. The pitch black has covered my face, neck and head, with the exception of my eyebrows, my eyelashes, my irises of my eyes, my lips and teeth, which had all become the same shade of pure white. My hands instinctively found their way to grab the top of my head, to when I discovered that my hair thankfully wasn't changed. It took a second before I realized what had happened however, finding myself screaming and stumbling back to the center of the bathroom when I discovered that rather than becoming a different color, my hair had vanished entirely! My hand pressed against the top of my head to feel for anything, but I felt anything but skin. It was true. I was bald now!

"What is happening to me?!" I screamed out loud, no longer caring if anyone heard me.

I gasped, grabbing my throat as realized that my voice had also changed along with my appearance. It somehow sounded both masculine and feminine at the same time now, as if it could belong to either a boy or girl. I was in a complete utter loss of words, and just found myself sitting down in the middle of the bathroom, clutching my chest. I was sweating and shivering profusely from my panic, and my throat had become dry from how fast I hyperventilating before as I struggle to gasp for air. My eyes also began to burn from how long I had gone without blinking as well, forcing me to keep them shut as I tried to come to terms with my predicament.

I needed to take several minutes in order to pieces together all of the thoughts that were rampaging inside my mind, between the house, my sudden color change and my new voice. "This can't be happening" I continually thought to myself. Nothing made sense to me, and pinching myself did nothing, proving that this was in fact, not a dream. My brain and body were a complete wreck, a broken record of frustration, confusion, and fear. I had dozens of questions, and almost no answers. Even through all of this, I had the most brutal case of deja vu, as if even my own memories were getting fucked up by what was happening to me. Part of my mind was certain it knew where I was, desperately trying to help me understand my situation, while the other seemed to be actively fighting to stop me from remembering, and this constant struggle in my head only added to my anxiety. I clenched my hands tightly against my chest as tears poured from my eyes. It was the first time in my life where I felt truly lost and alone. No one was here to help me, and all I wanted was to go home.

After what felt like an hour, I was finally able to open my eyes again, and my breathing had returned to a more normal level. As much as I hated to say it, I was stuck in wherever I was, and crying my eyes out in some strangers bathroom wasn't getting me any closer to the answers my mind desperately craved for. Out of all of this confusion and panic, only a few of those thoughts were clear in my mind. I need to figure out what was going on, where I am, both how and why I got here and most importantly, how so I get home. Finally gathering what was left of my willpower, I pulled myself up from the ground and made my way towards the front door of the house, rubbing the last of the water from my eyes. I, however, took a quick moment to examine the rooms around me.

The bathroom was surprisingly spacious, and had white tiles for walls, dark blue tiles for flooring and the sink cabinet was green with a yellow. The same rug from the bedroom was being used for a shower mat, the glass on the corner cabinet was surrounded by a wooden frame, which was particularly wide on the bottom. On top of that, shelves were placed unusually high up, and the cabinet above the sink required me to stand on the counter top just to reach it. The kitchen had everything I was expecting, but had bizarre shades of light blue on the oven and the stranger radiator above it, dark blue and dark green on the drawer and cabinets, and dark blue wallpaper on the top half of the wall, and light blue tiling for the bottom. I wondered to myself what the owner was thinking with these choices of colors, but quickly shook it out of my head, remembering I was still in someone else's house. As I made my way to the front doors, I noticed my reflection on the glass cabinet in the corner near said doors, and took notice of the clothing I was wearing. I had on a blank white dress shirt covered by a open light, dark blue colored sweatshirt that had two purple streaks running around it, alongside a standard pair of blue jeans that were slightly ripped near the knees and red shoes with white laces and white tips. I knew these clothes weren't mine, as they were not was I was wearing the night, but I just thankful I had something to wear. I made a mental reminder to thank whoever owned this house.

Placing my hand on the front door handle, I took one more look at my hands, and I began to tense up again. This time however, it was not fear, but determination that flooded my body. I needed answers, and I was going to find them. Taking another deep breath, I slowly opened the door, momentarily blinded by the outside light and needing to block it with my hand, but I quickly adjusted to it as I made my way through the yard until I reached the sidewalk, where I-. No, it couldn't be! It just couldn't! It's size was staggering, even reaching far higher than the trees! There were shades of blue yellow, red and orange across it. Some parts of it were extending away from the rest with only wooden planks supporting them, and there were train tracks held in mid air by beams that led in and out of it along with a massive crate being suspended to the side with barely anything keeping it up. This structure was gigantic, and even with my struggling memory, I knew exactly what it was. I didn't want to believe it, but there was only one thing it could be. It was the Neighbor's house from Hello Neighbor!

... and I'm standing right in front of it.

This cannot be happening! This physically cannot be happening! Everything about I'm looking at is wrong! This building was from a video game, and yet here it was sitting right in front of me! Just the idea that it was real was a struggle for me to comprehend, but I couldn't bring myself to look away from it, to the point where I almost forgot to blink. I could feel my breaths become completely out of whack, as it now became an endeavor to not lose myself to the shock of seeing this nightmare in front of me. Everything within me was trying desperately to move, to look away, to do anything that would get me away from the terrifying realization of what I was staring at, but nothing I could do would tear me away from where I was standing. It felt like my body was frozen where it was, only being able to stare at this impossible structure that I was still struggling to believe was even real, let alone that I was across the street from it. Even as this horrifying building felt as if it was draining the willpower from my body, I heard a noise that distracted me for a split second, giving me the opportunity to gather the rest of my strength and turn the tiniest sliver of my attention towards the noise.

The noise is question was the skipping and humming of a young girl. The girl was humming to herself what sounded to be a theme song to a video game, which sounded familiar, although I couldn't recall from where I heard it from. Regardless, those clicking of her shoes started to become louder the more time passed, which told me that she was heading in my direction. Even with that said, I still wasn't able to turn to see who was coming, as all of my focus was being sucked away from by this damn house. I was concentrating so much to turn myself away from the house that I wasn't expecting the sudden force that struck my right side, sending me stumbling slightly to the left, finally snapping me out of my stasis and giving me a split seconds opportunity to see what struck me. As it turns out, the young girl who was skipping had ran into me, knocking me out of my staring contest with the house. I didn't notice this at first, as I was too busy rubbing the right side of my head with my hand, which was the part that got struck the most. Wincing in pain, I was able to open my left eye and turned my head towards the girl, who was mumbling "ow" to herself repeatedly, sitting on the ground rubbing circles in her forehead with both her hands, most likely where she hit the side of my head. The girl had brown-pinkish hair with a large red bow on the left side. She was also wearing a white dress shirt very similar to my own along with a brown vest, an unbuttoned dark grey blazer held together by a red knot, a short dark blue skirt, socks that nearly reached her knees and white shoes with light blue tips. Alongside those was a large bright red spot where her head hit my own, mostly covered by her rubbing hands. Funny, I could have sworn I recognized her from somewhere, but I just couldn't remember. God, this memory problem is getting really fucking annoying.

Feeling the stinging on my own head start to ease up, I let go of my head and extended my right hand towards the girl.

"Are you all right?" I asked her gently.

Gasping in surprise, the young girl stopped rubbing her head and replied softly. "Yeah, I think so."

"Sorry that I-" She began to say reaching for my hand, only to suddenly pull it back as she looked up towards me, her eyes widening to point where I swore they were going to pop out off their sockets. However, this was enough for me to get a good look at her face. Her eyes were the most beautiful shade of ocean blue and I could hardly make out her nose, which, now that I think about it, reminds me of... oh no... is that?

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Our screams were simultaneous.

"S- Sayori?!" I questioned, although she didn't hear me through her own panic.

It was enough to completely catch me off guard, sending me back a few paces, while my arms stiffened so while my elbows remained parallel so my sides, the other half of my arms and my hands shot out in front of me defensively, while Sayori tried her best to shuffle away while still facing towards me, her breathing entering total overdrive. The goddamn house was bad enough as is, but now she's here too! I almost thought I could piece together where I was, but now this throws everything out of whack again! I know she was just a 2D character in a video game before, but seeing her like this just felt unreal, even more so than the house.

"Two different games at the same time?!" "What the hell is going on?" I pondered to myself, quickly turning my head back and forth between Sayori and the building that remained just to my left.

"W-who are you?" "W-why do you look like that?" Asked a horrified Sayori.

I gasped, taking out of my thoughts as I turned back towards her, arms dropping to my sides, yet remaining stiff. There was a distinctive fear in her watering eyes as she stared at me, uncertain about what to do. Her breathing was still incredibly fast, and she looked like she was trying to get up and run away, but something was keeping her frozen in shock. For a second, I was confused on why she was so scared, but quickly realized her fear when I caught sight hands again. Clenching my shaking hands, I felt a tear fall down my cheeks as I turned away from Sayori. As I did, I hear her audibly gasp in surprise.

"I'm sorry..." I told her quietly before taking off down the sidewalk.

"Hey! Wait!" I hear her shout behind me, but I didn't look back. I needed to figure out what was going on, and I needed to find out where I was. I caught a glimpse of a large town full of skyscrapers out in the distance and, not knowing what else to do, made a beeline towards the them without a second thought, praying that I could find my answers there.

I still found myself running as fast as I was when I started when I neared closer to the town. It was abnormally close to the neighborhood that I first woke up in, and the town up close seems so much different than that old fashioned house. As I grew close to the buildings I first saw, I took notice of the large sign that stood just outside of the town. It was made using seemly clean cut wood, curved into two tall light brown stakes that held a large rectangular brown plank that was more wide and long. The wood looked freshly stained and in the middle were a series of individually cut and styled letters of multiple shades of colors that spelled out two different words.

"Indie Town..." I said to myself. "Must be its name."

Quickly discarding that thought train, I keep up my pace as I continue deeper into the heart of the town. I was already sweating buckets, my heart rate was through the roof, and I felt like I was about to collapse, but something inside of me told me to keep running anyway. As I headed into the downtown, I began to look around and noticed the townspeople that I was running through. They all looked like they were from different video games and most were acting just as bizarre. Some were seeming just as confused as I was, as they got a look at their new surroundings. Other characters were conversing with each other, some were getting into fights, which were breaking out in the middle of the road, and most confusing of all, some were acting like nothing was going on, like they were still in their own games and not... wherever this place was.

Regardless, I pushed my way through the crowds and pressed on, as I began to also take notice of the different types of buildings and setpieces that were scattered throughout the town. I caught sight of a large library to my right, styled after an ancient Grecian architectural structure surrounded by grass and sidewalks, a mostly fenced off parking lot to my left, with the only way in being connected to the road outside, and within the parking lot looked to be some sort of restaurant with a large 2D brown cartoon bear resting on the sign. Ahead of me out to the distance also rested a giant mountain with what appear to be a large hole on the top, although it definitely didn't appear to be a volcano of any kind. Outside of those, the standard buildings and skyscrapers that surrounded me seemed to all look the same. They looked to be basic rectangular apartment building with flat, single colored walls and had two sets of windows for each level, which each building seemed to have varying amount of them. The only difference between them were how tall they were and what color they were, which were all basic colors. Blue, red, green, yellow, orange and white, among several others.

In fact, I found myself so distracted by the town around me that I almost didn't notice what I was about to cross ahead, forcing myself to grind to a halt mere inches from the line that separated the light and the dark... the literal line. As in, an obvious straight untouchable line between the mourning light and... whatever was going on in front of me. A single step would take from the blue sky and clear sky of the town and put me into a dark, cloudy thunderstorm shrouded in fog that looked completely out of place from everything around it. When I looked to see said clouds, I discovered that the storm formed a large equilateral square around this area of land, although it was too far up to see if there was anything above the clouds. The land was surrounded by worn down metal fences which reached my chest and from what I could make out in the fog, only housed a single building, which looked to be an old church looking structure, and I was able to see that a sign was attached to the building. I tired squinting my eyes, but I couldn't make out what it said, as it is faded thanks to the fog and seemed to be decaying, at least from what I could tell. However, when I looked down at the gate of the fence in front of me, there was what looked to be a hastily made sign made of rope and square plank of wood. Grabbing the wooden plank, I brought up to the light where I could better see what was on it, which turned out to be some sloppy red paint which read out "Gospel of Dismay."

Dammit, I know I heard that somewhere before, but from where?

"Hey, wait up!" I heard Sayori shouting behind me through her own troubled breathing.

Dropping the sign and hearing the bang it made as it smacked into the metal gate, I turned to face her as she rushed up to my side before having to catch her breath, using her knees to help keep herself from falling over.

"Wow, you're fast." Sayori told me as her breathing recovered.

She eventually managed to recover, and brought herself up upright to see the storm that I came across. I watched as her eyes widened and was rapidly shooting her head around between the storm, me and the town behind, spinning herself in circles, seeming completely confused and at a loss for words as she took in everything around. Her arms become crossed on her chest and she was shivering profusely as if she was cold.

"I... I don't remember... any of this. Everything is different and... scary..." She finally spoke after taking some time looking around and turning back towards the storming acre.

Suddenly, Sayori perked up and turned towards me, as if she was about to say something, but I cut her off before she could get any words out.

"I'm sorry, but I need to figure out what's going on here. None of this is making any sense." I said to her bluntly before taking off back in the other direction.

"Hey, wait!" I hear her shout behind me, but she didn't sound to be chasing after me again. I hated to have to leave her in a situation like that, but I had too many questions that demanded attention, and it drove me crazy that I had yet to get any of the answers that my mind so desperately craved. I just needed to get to a place where I could think about everything that I saw, and there was only one place I could think of where I do that. With this in mind, I picked up my pace and hurried back through the town toward the house I woke up in.

Sayori's POV

I reached out with my hand, hoping to grab him before he left, but my feet wouldn't move anymore. I couldn't do anything but watch as he disappeared into the crowd of strangers. My arm dropped to my side as I felt a wave of rejection hit me like a gust of cold wind, and felt a tear fall down my cheek as I hanged my head in shame and turned right down the sidewalk, seeing the school out in the distance. My thoughts were all over the place, trying to make sense of everything that had happened throughout the last few minutes.

"What was that all about? Why was his face like that? Why was he running like that? Was it because of...me...?"

I shook my head, trying to throw out that train of thought, but of course it didn't work, leaving me with the feeling of guilt I was all too familiar with. Trying to turn my thoughts away from that idea, I spun my head back towards the weird new town.

"And why is the town so different now? I didn't know any of those places, or those people. I'm so confused." I thought to myself, my hands bringing themselves to the sides of my head. My head started to hurt from all the different things that I saw, and not being able to understand any of them. I just wanted to know what was going on, but I didn't know how.

In the middle of my confusion, an idea popped into my head. "Hey, maybe the others noticed all this weird stuff too!" I realized. "I'll have to bring it up during the club today. Maybe they might have an idea about what's going on!"

With that tiny ray of hope by my side, I brought myself back towards the school and made my way to the clubroom.

I guess I wasn't feeling that great as I made my way down the hallway towards the clubroom. It was the weekend, and Monika had asked everyone to come in today to help with preparations for our school's upcoming club fair, to see if we could bring in some new members, and usually I would really excited to help out, but today, I just didn't feel like myself. Maybe it was all the weird stuff that I saw, or maybe it was the guy who kept running away from me, I just didn't feel like myself today. The rainclouds were really strong this morning, but I tried holding on to that tiny shard of hope that I wouldn't be alone in my confusion.

Approaching the twin doors, I suddenly felt a strange sense of dread slam itself into my chest. Was I scared to tell about what I saw? That they wouldn't believe me? Would I just make myself look like a big idiot, trying to tell them about the town and that guy? Was any of it even real, or was it just a bad dream? For a second, I wasn't even sure I wanted to go in, but I knew the others would get worried about me if I didn't show up today, and I didn't want that to happen. So, with all that in my mind, I placed my hands on the doors, took a deep breath, put on my best smile and flung the doors open.

Music Cue: "Doki Doki Literature Club - Main Theme"

"Hi everyone!" I yelled, surprising the three other girls in the room. These three were my fellow literature club members, Yuri, Natsuki and Monika.

Yuri had light purple eyes and long purple hair with a tiny bright purple hair clip in the upper left part. She was also pretty tall compared to the rest of us, and she looked more physically developed than us too, which I know made Natsuki really jealous, as she was the shortest out of all of us. She had pink eyes and short pink hair with the cutest little ponytails on both sides of her head with little groups of hair poking out from underneath them. She also had a red hair clip shaped like an hourglass to the right of her forehead. They had two desks upfront moved next to each other and were sitting together reading what looked to be a novel of some kind, something called "The Silver Eyes". I didn't know what it was about, but they seemed like they were really enjoying it, and it hurt a little to interrupt them, especially when right as I came in, Yuri almost jumped right out of her seat.

In a desk behind sat Monika, the club president. She was taller than me, but not as tall as Yuri, had bright green eyes and long light brown hair with two really long bangs next to where her ears were. The rest of her hair was in a ponytail that almost reached her lower back, all tied together with a big white bow. Like the rest of us, she was dressed in our standard school uniforms, but she had black socks and shoes with pink tips rather than blue tips like the rest of us. On the desk she was sitting at was covered with a bunch of papers and a book about computer coding. Wonder why she has that book. It doesn't seem like something she would normally bring to the club.

Everyone turned to face me as I came in.

"Hello Sayori! Glad you could make it today!" Yuri stood up and said to me, sounding very relieved. Natsuki however, seemed really annoyed when she came to me with her hands crossed.

"About time!" She said right into my face. "What took you so long?!"

"Huh? What do you mean?" I asked her, really confused by her question. Before she could say anything though, Monika stood up and come over to where everyone was standing.

"We were worried you weren't going to show up." Monika told me. "It wouldn't be a literature club meeting without you, Sayori." She gestured me towards the clock, which read 3:45 pm, 15 min later than Monika asked as to be at the club today. It was then that I realised my mistake.

"Whoops!" "Hehehe~" I spoke with a small chuckle, pushing my index fingers together in front of me. "Sorry, I just have a lot on my mind." "I didn't realize what time it was."

"Don't worry about it." Monika reassured me, patting me on the shoulder. "As long as you're here, that's all that matters." Then, with a snap of her fingers, she quickly got all our attention, curious as to what our president had to say.

"Okay everyone!" She announced. "Now that we're all accounted for, we can start to work on those fair preparations."

"Actually..." I said to her, slow raising my hand. "I have something I want to ask."

Monika shot me a annoyed glance and looked like she was about to say something, but then just sighed and asked, "What is it?"

I suddenly felt 3 pairs of eyes staring directly at me and a lump grow in my throat. All of my worries began to hit me all at once, but it was too late to not say anything now. With a painful glup, I started to speak.

"So... I ran into someone today and... something was really weird about him..."

"Ooo~ Is it a boy you like~?" Natsuki chimed in.

"W-What!? No!" I said quickly, trying to defend myself. I could hear Natsuki chuckling to herself.

"It's alright, Sayori. You don't to tell us if you don't want to." Yuri replied.

"Nonono, it's not like that at all!" I told them. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"What? Of course we would believe you! You're our friend." Monika said to me.

"No, that's not what I mean. I just... couldn't tell if he was a boy or a girl." I admitted.

"Huh? How?" Questioned Natsuki, understandably confused by this.

"It's possible they could have looked like either gender." Yuri replied. "Boys can look like girls, and vice versa." "It's possible they could have been transgender as well." Natsuki didn't say anything, but just crossed her arms while looking down at the ground, like she hadn't thought of that.

"But the weirdest thing was, his f-, her-, their face was all black and their eyes were all white!" I continued while gesturing towards my own face, having to stop and correct myself when I remembered I didn't know which gender they were. "and I know I never seen someone like that before, but.. they still felt really familiar to me..."

Everyone else was completely confused by what I said, which I knew was going happen, but I just felt like I needed to say it. I didn't know why, but I really didn't believe it myself, so I guess I just needed someone that understood my own confusion. The other club members all turned to face each other with puzzled looks, then turned back towards me.

"Sayori..." Monika started.

"I know, I know!" "I know you weren't going to believe me..." I told them, hanging my head towards the floor in shame.

No! It's not that I all. I just..." Monika tried to tell me.

"It's fine!" I said to her bluntly. "You don't have to lie to make me feel better." Wanting to move away from that topic, I brought up my original point. "Besides, that wasn't even what I was going to ask you."

"Then, what were you going to ask?" Monika questioned.

"Well..." I hesitated before continuing. "Has anyone noticed how different the town looks today?"

Music fades out

The room suddenly got really tense as I asked the question. Yuri and Natsuki looked at each other with uncertainty while in the corner of my eye I thought I saw Monika's eye get really wide for a split second before she shook her head.

Yuri was the first to say something. "...I mean..."

"Now that you mention it, the town did look different today.." Natsuki added.

Monika looked really confused at us. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "The town looks the same as it always does."

What Monika said didn't make any sense to me. Did Monika really not notice anything different. "Maybe I'm just seeing things..." I thought out loud.

"It's not just you, Sayori." Yuri said to me. "We definitely are not in the same town anymore. In fact, as far as I can tell, this room is the only place that remained the same from yesterday."

"This doesn't make any sense." Natsuki pointed out. "The town can't just randomly change overnight. We have to be somewhere else now."

"Guess I haven't been paying attention, but I didn't see anything different." Admitted Monika.

"How could you not!?" Natsuki questioned, turning to face the club president. "The town isn't even close to what it was before!"

"Are you sure you didn't see anything, Monika?" I asked her, although I don't think she heard me, as both Yuri and Natsuki were now interrogating her now, and I could see the terrified expression on her face.

"I find that hard to believe, Monika!" Yuri said to her face frustratedly to her face. "Why are you trying you're trying to ignore this problem? "You would never push away something like this before!"

"Yea." Natsuki agreed. "You would have to be blind to not see that something is wrong today!"

"Guys, can we stop fighting please!" I shouted, but no one heard.

"I-I'm, um... I mean-. Are you sure you guys are ok?" Monika hesitated. I could see her flashing her eyes between her two fellow club members, trying to decide what to do. Her eyes started to water as she began to realize she was fighting a losing battle.

"Absolutely!" Yuri admitted bluntly. "Are you sure you're not the one having the issues right now?!"

"Why can't you just admit that the town is different?!" Natsuki told Monika.

"STOP FIGHTING PLEASE!" I screamed, not being able to hold myself back anymore. Everyone shot around back towards as I shouted, obviously taken by surprize by my sudden outburst.

"S-Sayori..." Yuri startled. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

Yuri and Natsuki suddenly looked really guilty, and Yuri's face turned bright red as she turned away from the rest of us. From the far wall of the classroom, I could hear Monika sigh out loud towards the ground, then suddenly perked up, snapping her fingers as she got our attention with a confident expression on her face.

Okay everyone! I have an idea!" She announced. "Why we pause the project for today and take a walk around town?" "That way we can get a feel for the layout of this different town."

"Ooo, that sounds fun!" I said.

"Hang on." Natsuki spoke up. "A second ago you were just saying that the town wasn't different. Why now would you suddenly say that is now?"

There was a short period of silence before Monika spoke up again. "I... I realized that I was wrong..." Monika replied with a little hesitation. "Perhaps I was just trying to deny that fact, but I didn't mean to lie to you guys the way I did, and I'm sorry about that."

"...Alright, but I'm holding you to that!" Natsuki stated directly to our president. Monika then turned towards Yuri, who was still shaking and facing the wall, trying not to look at us.

"...Yuri, I-" Monika started to speak softly, then Yuri suddenly spun around to face Monika And shouted "I'M SORRY!". I could see Monika step back in surprise, but soon after, Yuri eyes widened as if was she just realised what she said, saying "sorry" to her over and over again, falling to her knees and shaking her head .

"Yuri. It's alright." Monika said to her, kneeling down to her level.

"...I-I don't what come over me." Yuri told her. "I shouldn't have yelled at you like that, but I just... couldn't control myself. I'm so sorry Monika!"

"Don't worry about it." Monika reassured her. "I was... being stubborn. You had every reason to get as mad as you did. I promise I wouldn't act like that again." She then placed her hand on Yuri's shoulder. "Let's just put all of this behind us, okay?"

Yuri, after a short pause, finally looked up again at our club president, wiping her eyes and putting on a smile before the two shared a hug.

"Thank you..." said Yuri. The two then let go of each other, stood back up and turned towards me and Natsuki.

"A walk does sound nice." Yuri admitted. "It would be good to get an idea of how this new town is like."

"Oh, we should go say hi to that person I meet earlier!" I told the others.

"Are you sure?" Monika asked me. "We don't know anything about them."

"Why not?" They looked just as confused about the town as I did, with how fast they were running around, and how scared they looked..."

"Then it settled! We'll take a stroll around the town, then go meet Sayori's new friend!" Monika stated.

"Yay, let's go!" I shouted excitedly.

"Lead the way." Said Yuri.

Monika's POV

The road to that mysterious person Sayori met wasn't very long at all, as the town was surprising smaller than any of us had expected. The townspeople were just as confused at our new surrounded as we are, and most of them were very friendly as well, which was a nice surprise considering my initial skepticism. From the moment I woke up, I knew something was wrong, but I just couldn't bear to tell the others, especially after what they had been through. Regardless, we made our way down the sidewalk towards the house Sayori was leading as towards, bouncing and skipping ahead like nothing was wrong. I always appreciated that about her, able to keep herself and other cheerful even during the darkest of times, even if she has to fake it. Yuri and Natsuki had fallen behind me, as they were engaged in their own conversation.

"Come on. We're almost there!" Sayori shouted to us.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" I shouted back.

"Of course! This is right where I bumped into him, literally! Hehehe~"

Even with her enthusiasm, I couldn't help but feel a sense of dread fill the air as we made our way towards the house. Something did not feel right, but I couldn't tell what it was. All I know what that I was getting worried about this person that Sayori told us about, as we knew nothing about them, and even though everyone is the town was friendly, I didn't want to take any chance, especially with the town being so different than what we knew before. Not helping was the fact that as we grew closer, we caught of a giant structure to our right. It was roughly three to four time larger than a normal house, it's walls were filled with many different colors, there was a train track setup being supported by tall beams, and the entire building looked incredibly unstable, with different parts of the structure hanging above the ground, seemingly ready to fall apart at any moment.

"Woah! Who needs a house THAT big?" I could hear a surprised Natsuki say.

"Perhaps they have a very...very large family?" Yuri answered uncertainty.

"or maybe he's overcompensating for something." Natsuki proudly stated.

"That's... another possibility..."

We soon came up to the house just opposite of the giant structure, and Sayori wasted no time making her way towards the door. This house was much more tame than the one across the street, with a light blue wooden exterior and a crimson colored roof, a short white picket fence separated by a rough dirt patch which straight to his house and a few long white colored wooden stairs and a railing which led to the door. Sayori quickly jumped up the stairs and was about to ring the doorbell, only to stop once she realized there wasn't one there. She then began to violently and rapidly knock on the door, but as she did, the door began to open. I guess the person who lived here didn't shut it completely. She slowly started to open the door, only to jump back gasping as she did. We quickly ran up to her and before we ask what was wrong, we saw what caused her sudden reaction. The walls and ceiling of the room were covered head to toe with pictures and papers filled with seemingly random black painted text. Thick black lines were also connecting some of those pages and pictures together, all of it looked random and rushed, like whoever did all this did it in a massive panic. I could hardly fathom any words to describe what I felt upon seeing this. All I could think of was...

"W-What is this!?"


	5. Chapter 2 - Encounter of Fate

Monika's POV

I was at a lack of words as I stared at the sight in front of us. The rooms were covered head to toe with papers and giant black words written in what looked to be hastily painted on, as if whoever did this was in a major rush to do so, and words like "Why" and "How" were covering a bunch of the papers pinned to the walls. I had no idea what would drive someone to do this, but something inside me was curious to find out why.

"We shouldn't be here." I heard Yuri say worriedly. "We should leave before we get in trouble."

"Are you sure this is the right house, Sayori?!" Natsuki asked confused and concerned.

"I'm sure!" Exclaimed Sayori. "They were standing in front of the house when I ran into them!" As the three continued their discussion, I found myself slowly and unconsciously being drawn deeper into the house, my curiosity desperately wanting to understand what everything in this place meant.

Throughout the many pieces of paper placed on the walls were some that had pictures of them. These pictures were off people I had never seen before and all of them had the words "Potential Threat" above them written in the same black ink as the rest of the walls. One was of a older, clearly angry man with brown hair with part of it sticking upwards, thick eyebrows, green eyes and a mustache all sitting above a huge chin which alone almost doubled the size of his head, which took the shape of an upright curved rectangle. He was also wearing a short sleeved yellow dress shirt with a blue diamond pattern sleeveless vest on top of it. The picture was cut off after that, but I could tell that whoever this was certainly wasn't happy having his picture taken. In fact, the house that was in the background behind this man was the same massive house sitting across the street from were we where. Just why did this person not only have a picture of their clearly upset neighbor, but also consider them a threat to themself?

Just next to that was a set of four pictures pinned right next to each other, which seemed to be four different human-sized robot animals, which looked like those animatronics at restaurants made to entertain children. The one on the far left was a large brown bear robot wearing a tiny black top hat and a large black bow tie holding a microphone in it's right hand. To his left was a similarly sized purple bunny robot with a red bow tie holding a red electric guitar. Another picture showed a tall yellow chicken wearing a white bib that covered it's entire chest and also was holding a plate that had a pink cupcake with eyes on it. The bib in question had the words "Let's Eat!" in yellow with a purple outline. Guess that answers my question on where they made for. The last picture was particularly off putting for me, as it had a tall orange fox with an eyepatch over it's right eye and a hook for a right hand, but even beyond the obvious pirate motif was the fact that this one seemed noticeably broken down. It's jaw was hanging open and parts of it's chest, arms and leg had large pieces torn off revealing the robot parts underneath the costumes. It's lower legs, feet and left hand were also completely exposed, as if the designer didn't have to finish putting it together. These four were definitely disturbing in their appearance, but nothing about them seemed to be a threat like this person thought they were.

Another picture was sitting next to the room below the stairs, and looked to be a 2D cartoon character. He was mostly dark in color, but had a completely white face save for the eyes, which were pitch black oval only cut off by the bottom of each eye by half circles and a pie shaped cutout of the left side of each eye. The character strangely didn't have a neck, it's head just floating above its body, but it sported a large white bow tie, white gloves with two large black dots on them, and black shoes that rounded out its otherwise human shaped appearance. Its smile seemed innocent, although I was taken aback by the fact the top of its head was shaped to give the character devil like horns. Even with the horns, there was no way this cartoon character could be considered a threat to anyone. Whoever this was had to know that cartoons can't come to live, it's just common sense. The more of these pictures I see, the more I started to question the person who lived here.

The picture posted on the wall facing towards the stairs was the strangest one of all. It was just a white pixelated image of a sunflower with upright black rectangle eyes and a adorable genuine smile. Now I was baffled by the fact this was even here, and was seriously beginning to question what was going on in this person's head, thinking that a group of children's entertainment robots, a cartoon character or a 8-bit flower could ever be considered a "threat." Beyond just those pictures were several newspaper clipping that took up much of the walls, detailing the disappearance of children, employees that once worked at a animation studio, and ships that were rumored to be attacked and robbed of their cargo. I was completely at a loss as to what would cause someone to do this.

Even after everything I've seen so far, nothing could prepare me for what I saw next. At the bottom of the stairs leading upstairs was another piece of paper, but this one was something I never thought I would see again. The emptiness of the room, the sight and color of the literal space behind the windows, the way the person in the picture was sitting at the empty desk in the center of the room, with her chin resting on her hands, being held up by her arms and elbows. This picture was of...

...me!

The unconscious gasp that came from me was heard by my fellow club members, as I quickly noticed them running my way as I realized who was on the picture.

"Monika, are you alright?!" Yuri called out as the group ran over to where I was.

"What happened?!" Natsuki asked suddenly.

"What's going on?!" Sayori asked, following behind the others.

Everyone came up to where I was standing, and they all were similarly shocked when they saw my picture.

"What the hell!?" Natsuki shouted.

"Huh? Why do they have a picture of you?" Sayori asked confused.

"They think you're dangerous?!" Questioned a concerned Yuri. "You wouldn't hurt anyone, let alone whoever's house this is!" I hesitated for a second, then shook my head. "No..." I said softly enough that only I could hear it.

Tightening my grip on the paper, I turned to face the top of the stairs and declared out loud, "But I'm going to find out!"

I stormed my way up the stairs, determined to get some answers about everything I've seen here, my fellow club members following close behind constantly trying to ask me what I was doing, but I ignored them and focused my efforts on making my way towards the upstairs rooms, where I began to hear noises coming from behind the closed door on the right side just after taking a left into a small hallway. There sounded like there was only one person in the room, and they sounded clearly frustrated, yelling and stomping around the room, although it was muffled, so I couldn't tell what they were saying. Then I heard a noise of what sounded like someone landing on a bed before all the noises from the room ceased. Not wanting to waste any more time, I threw the door open and saw someone laying face down on the bed in the top left corner, seemly exhausted from whatever they were doing before. However, I was completely shocked when the person looked up at us and I saw their face for the first time. They were exactly how Sayori described them to look like. Completely black skin, along with white irises, eyebrows, eyelashes, lips and fingernails and bald, along with looking in their late teens. They jumped back and nearly hit the wall when they saw us with a shocked gasp, clearly taken aback by our sudden entrance.

We found ourselves just staring at each other for a number of seconds before they quickly snapped their head back and forth between us and the wall, which had another picture of me in the same position sitting on the opposite wall, before quickly jumping out of the bed and tried to cover the picture with their body.

"Heeyyyy! I wasn't expecting any company today!" They attempted to tell us in an seemingly genuine way while trying to hide themselves behind a set of closed eyes and an innocent grin, both of with slowly gave away as they realized none of us were buying their story. They soon gave up, and with a sigh, hanged their head towards the ground and said to us, "I guess I can't hide it from you anymore? At least give a me chance to explain myself." After a long pause, they began to speak, bring their head back up towards us.

"I'm not from this world. In fact, I'm not from any of these worlds. I was just playing games at my desk before everything suddenly went black, and I found myself lying on that bed." They stated, pointing towards the one in the corner. "I have no idea what's going on, or why I'm suddenly seeing all of these video game characters as if they were actually real. All I know is that something had to have brought me and everyone else together here, which is why all of these pictures are hanging." Gesturing towards the walls with their outstretched hand, they continued. "Although, everything I've found so far has gotten me absolutely nowhere!" They started to yell, spinning away from us and yanking a random picture off the wall in a frustrated manner, staring at it with rage in their next words. "Someone out had to have caused all this, and I'm sure they would have needed not only the ability to, but something movitived them to shove all of these characters together! Someone wanted these people here, and I'm going to figure out who it is!" They managed to calm down down a bit before resumed their story. "All I could guess is that whoever did this must of had someone some sort of malicious purpose, which is why I've gathers all these pictures and articles of criminals and murders, as maybe they could help me get some sort of lead."

"And you think Monika could have done this?!" Just to my left, I saw Yuri step forward towards the individual with a insulted look on her face, clearly upset with what they were saying. They stiffed upon hearing Yuri's sickened words, slowly turning back towards us, and I could very clearly the horrified expression on their face. Natsuki then set herself by Yuri's side.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" She shouted at them. "First you start spitting this bullshit story at us, then you start accusing Monika of murder?! You're fucking sick!"

I was utterly stunned by everything that had just happened. This person who I've never seen before somehow knows about me, had a picture of the game on their wall of my most desperate moment and now both Yuri and Natsuki were defending me from them, even after all the horrible things I had done to them and Sayori. Speaking of Sayori, I looked over to her, who was backing away from the confrontation, clenching her hands together. She turned to face, just enough to where I could see the worry that filled her eyes.

"Nonono, that's not what I meant at all!" The person said quickly, desperately trying to defend themselves while holding their hands up in front of them, but everyone else knew they were fighting a losing battle, including myself.

"Then start explaining why you have that picture of her, and more importantly, why it's hanging on the wall with all these other people!" Yuri demanded, taking another step towards them. I could see the person's eyes flashing rapidly between Yuri, Natsuki, the page in my hands, and the wall to their left, filled with the same barrage of papers and black text as the ones downstairs.

"I-I...I" They tried to say, but their words kept getting caught off by their violent gasping, almost sounding like they were about to start choking on their voice. Natsuki then stepped forward past Yuri, placing herself directly in front of the person. Her fists were clenched by her sides, and her furious demeanor was enough to nearly send the person she was staring at into shock. I could see the absolute fear in the person just from the wideness of their eyes and the shaking of their hands, but rather than do anything sudden, all Natsuki said was "You disgust me...". She then stepped back to where Yuri was, and placed herself by her side. "I say we should be calling the police on you, but luckily for you, we don't even know if there any in this place." She told them, and turned around, heading for the door. "Come on" She said to us. "Let's get out of here, I'm done talking to this psycho." Yuri turned to face the person once more, a look of anger filling her expression.

"I can't believe you would do such a thing!" Yuri said to them before she also started leaving. I saw Sayori stare at him for a while with tears beginning to fill her eyes, before she followed them without a word. I also couldn't bring myself to leave right away. I was at a complete lack of words regrading the last few minutes. Just who was this person? Why would they have that picture? Do... Do they know? I didn't want to believe it, but I know I wouldn't be able to deny it for long. Before my train of thought of continue, I turned around to head out alongside the other, who were already making their way down the stairs.

"Please!" I heard them yell from behind me. "You have to believe me!" I stopped. Even with everything that had just happened, I couldn't help but feel bad for them. They're just as lost and confused as we are, and just like us, was only trying to piece this mess together, but at the same time... did they only see me as some sort of murderer? I don't blame them if they did. After everything I've done, I'm not surprised that anyone would to be honest, but just to be safe, I did my best to conceal those thoughts and turned back towards them.

"...why would we?" I said to them in a threatening manner, trying to get them to back off and let us leave without any trouble.

"Because...Because..." They muttered, continuing to try and control the situation. However, suddenly they stopped, and before I made it the door, I could heard them say the one thing I hoped I would never have to hear.

"Because I know what you did to them!"

...oh no.

"Don't listen to their crap, Monika!" I could Natsuki shout from downstairs. Then after a short moment, three pairs of shoes came running back to me.

"Monika..?" Natsuki said again, this time much more calm, yet confused.

Monika, are you alright?" Asked a worried Yuri.

I could feel my hands and legs shaking, my knees getting weak, my grip on the door handle to my right tighten to the point where it would have hurt if I could focus on it, and all of the air in my body getting sucked all at once, leaving me struggling to get any sort of noise outside of my own gasps. Even worse than all of that, was all of the painful memories that began to surge and infect my mind. Memories I never wanted to see ever again. The soulless, lifeless body of Sayori hanging from her bedroom ceiling from a bloody noose of her own creation, her color of her eyes slowly fading away into nothingness. The painful noises of Natsuki's neck cracking and snapping to her side, and the way her body abnormally launched itself toward the player character, as if her own feral instincts had taken over her own desire for them. The cold emptiness that filled the classroom the day of the festival when I walked in, only to witness the drying, decaying corpse of Yuri resting on one of the desks, with holes in her chest and the kitchen knife she used to make them laying by her side, the blood gone black from exposure to the outside world... and what did I do?

...I laughed at her...

Then came that picture again, only this time, I was really me in that barrien room, the eternal void of space surrounding us as I stared into the eyes of the one I loved... and the one who I could never reach... I could feel my eyes to burn and water, but I didn't have the strength to close them, as my mind become tormented by unforgivable mistakes. I could still remember what it felt like. The pure agony that consumed my being as I was betrayed the only person I ever cared for. It felt like every part of my body being unbearably torn apart, piece by piece, each tear more brutal and painful than the last, until there was nothing left. Nothing... but black, and regret. All of this, because I loved someone I could never be with.

I could feel my hands start to become numb with how hard I was holding the door handle, so I forced myself to let go, and once my breathing and blinking were finally back to a normal level, I slowly made my way around to face towards the person once more.

"How?" I asked them softly. "How did you know that?"

They didn't answer right away, but rather simply sighed. Soon after, they placed their clenched hand on their chest and replied "Because I played your game in my world, and I saw what you did!"

"What the hell is he talking about, Monika?" "What do they mean by "your game?""

I could hear Natsuki and Yuri asking me questions from behind me, desperate to get my attention, but I didn't answer. At this point, I was beyond furious with this person. The last thing I ever wanted was to have to experience those memories again, and here this person was using them against me! I could start to feel my hands clench and my blood boil, and they were about to hit their breaking point.

"Damnit!" I shouted, shocking everyone else in the room. I could hear my club members immediately stop talking, taking a step back from me, but I refused to let it faze myself as I kept my attention on the person in front of me. "Why did you have to bring that up? I've been trying to move on from those mistakes and set things right this time, but now here you are dragging me back there again! Besides, why should I believe anything you say? For all I know, you could just be another one of those video game characters that showed up today."

"Don't believe me, fine!" They replied with anger in their words, holding their arms up at their sides. "Look me up in the game files, see if you find anything!"

I hesitated for a moment. Did they know I could access the game files? What if they were telling the truth after all? I shook my head, trying to clear those thoughts out. Either way, I wanted to be sure, so I stepped forward until I was within arms length from them. The others behind me didn't follow, most likely completely lost with the situation. I took a deep breath, and managed to recall how to access the files within my mind, my hands and arms glowing with a soft light blue aura as I did so. This happened before whenever I access the files, so this was nothing knew to me. I could more confused "Huh's", "What's" and grunts from behind me, but I tuned them out, wanting to focus on the task at hand. I outstretched my hand, and the aura grew from it into the person chest. They didn't react, as it had no physical effects, and I began to mentally scanned the files for a match. But as it turns out, there was so much I hadn't yet seen in this place, and without warning, hundreds upon hundreds of different names, faces, places and people were all shown to me all at once. It was physically impossible for me to make anything out with just how much was flying across my mind all at the same time. It didn't long for it to become unbearable, and I even started to feel my head becoming hot from how fast it was trying to process everything that it was seeing, but eventually I realized that even with how many different files there were, I saw nothing that was even close to the person I was trying to find. I was determined to keep looking, but I knew that my mind was already becoming strained, and that I wasn't going to last much longer if I kept going, so I chose to cut the search off there, but before I could get the chance do, something struck me out of nowhere not physically, but mentally. This strange sudden force completely threw me out of my concentration, and within milliseconds, began to carve its way into my mind. I didn't know what was going on, but all I knew was that my head started to hurt, like it was about to burst open that's how much it hurt. It almost felt like a lighting bolt had just zapped my brain, and it wasn't stopping.

*User "Monika" removed by Admin. File access blocked by password*

My hands snapped themselves onto the top of my head as I reeling back from the individual, trying to do something about this burning mental onslaught. I could hear the others rushing over to my side as I fell over onto my side, kneeling down to help me back up.

"Monika, what happened? Are you ok? What's going on?" I heard Sayori say.

"Are you alright? Are you hurt?" Yuri spoke as she and the others helped me back to my feet, trying to stay calm as she did so.

"Natsuki once I standing again however, turned her gaze towards the person and yelled "What the hell did you do to her!?"

"I didn't do anything!" They shouted back. "If I had to guess, she tried to look me up in the files, and something didn't go right."

"Are you fucking insane!?" She screamed at them, absolutely livid with what she was hearing. "Give me one good reason why I should trust a single word that comes out your mouth!"

"Natsuki, please." I said to her, grabbing her shoulder with my free hand. She turned back around to me, a look of confusion enveloping her face, which quickly turned to guilt as she stepped back, allowing me to face the person once more. At this point, I could only fathom a single question.

"Just... who are you?"

"Like I said, I'm just someone trying to get home." They said to me, holding their hand out to me to shake, which I accepted.

"Listen, I'm sorry for everything that happened." I told them as guilt began to envelop me. "I shouldn't have acted the way I did, and I want to make up it up to you somehow. In any case, I do honestly believe your story now, and... I understand why you put my picture up with all those other awful people..."

"Monika" They stopped me, placing their hand on my arm. "Everything that happen in your game, that's all in the past, and just from the way you've spoke to me today, I can tell you're not the same person you're were from back then. You grown, you managed to bring them all back." They did a small head gesture towards my club members behind, telling me to look behind me towards them before turning back to them. "And I know you want to set everything right again. So..." They grabbed the paper still in my hand with their free hand and crumpled it up, throwing it off into the corner with the bed. "You don't have to worry about me anymore."

I couldn't believe what was happening, but at the same time, everything was starting to make sense. Obviously this person had every reason to suspect I brought them here, and if they did really did know what I've done, then that could only mean one thing.

"P-Player?" I asked. They nodded back. That was my breaking point. My tears took over my emotions, and I ran towards them for a hug, which they returned with open arms. I didn't care anymore if my friends heard my sorrows, THIS was the person I have spent my entire life trying to be with, and now I'm finally in their arms... but it still wasn't right.

"This is all wrong!" I shouted in between my cries, my hands clenching the back of their shirt. "I'm supposed to be in your reality! You can't be trapped in here with me!" They didn't say anything after that, rather we just stood there, embraced in each other arms. I don't know how long we were like this for, but I knew that I never wanted to let go ever again.


	6. Chapter 3 - Bearing the Pain of Love

Monika's POV

I had no idea how long we stayed like that in each others arms, but I knew nothing was going to change if I didn't let go. So, despite how much I wanted how remain in their arms, I had to force myself to push my body away from theirs, separating us until we were roughly arms length away from each other. Thanks to this, I could now see that they were about my height as well, which made their face seem directly parallel to my own. It was strange, but at the same time, it felt rather comforting, knowing that we could be facing each other without having one of us towering over the other. As I stared at them, taking in all of the details, I began to notice the confusion in their eyes, wondering about what had just happened. So, bringing myself back to the moment and sniffing my tears, I placed my hand on their shoulder and softly said to them, "Player... you know I want to be with you for the rest of my life..." Shaking my head, I continued, "but not like this. You can't be here with me...we need to get you home and..." My eyes fell to the ground, initially unsure about what I was going to say next, but it didn't take long for me to make up my mind. Turning my gaze back towards them, I declared to them "and I'm going to help you!" A determined smile found itself on my face upon finishing my statement, but in return, I noticed a shocked gaze fill the players eyes and taking a step away from me, clearly taken aback at what I said.

"I-I'm sorry!" They suddenly stated, catching all of us by surprise. "I can't let you guys help me."

"Huh?" This didn't make any sense to me at all. Why wouldn't they want us to help them?

"This is something I have to do alone." They told us, without a hint of hesitation in their words. "I don't want any of you to get hurt trying to help me, and I don't want to draw any attention to myself either." They turned away from us, looking back towards the paper covered walls. "No one else can get involved in this. Last thing I need are rumors to start spreading and things to get even worse." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This was the person I was willing to spend the rest of my life with, the one who went out of their way to spend their time playing our game, the one who gave me hope that we could truly be together, and now here they were trying to push us away for this absurdly selfish reason! I began to feel an empty feeling in my stomach, and felt like I was going to throw up, but I forced myself to keep my composure.

"No way!" I said to them. "We are going to help you, regardless if you want us to or not!"

"NO YOU'RE NOT!" They snapped back, spinning back around toward us. "In fact, I think you should just go!" They pointed at the door leading out of the room, their face filled with anger and frustration. I-I didn't know what to say anymore. I was just...crushed. Everything I thought I knew about the player up to point was nothing more than a blissful lie compared to they way they seemed now. Seeing them act and treat us like this I... I just couldn't take it anymore. So, running past the other girls, I made my way out of the room and down the stairs, too emotionally hurt to comprehend the surge of questions that came from the three familiar voices that followed close behind me.

Player's POV

Even after they had long since long, I could still feel the chills in my spine from the glare given to me by Natsuki before she took after the others. Just from the way she looked at me, I could tell exactly what she was saying, even without any words or motion, just her face alone was enough. I completely understood the way I sounded was a bit selfish, but nothing I said was a lie either. But when I stop to think about it, was it really the right call, telling them off like that... No, they had no idea the kinds of horrors they would have gotten themselves into had they went with me, but I just couldn't bring myself to tell them about them either. I could only imagine how crazy I would sound talking about murderous robots, ink covered demons, sentient psychotic flowers and neighbors hiding secrets in their basements. Plus, I was sure if I told them about those, it would only make them want to help me even more, which was exactly the thing I was trying to avoid. I wasn't about to let anyone get hurt, or even killed, trying to help me. This was something I had to do alone.

Turning my attention away from that train of thought, I found myself heading down those same stairs the girls did only a few moments ago, moving my eyes across the dozens of papers and words that continued to cover every wall of the rooms I came across, the sole exception being the windows and door leading out to the outside world, where I discovered, just across the street, a familiar, seemingly middle aged man has fastening the multiple locks that held shut an otherwise blank door, a door that looked to be keeping something, or maybe someONE, from getting in, or from getting out. A grin of confidence found itself on my expression. I had to find some answers...

... and I knew just where to start looking!

Monika's POV

There was an unsettling silence that surrounded myself as we left that house. Sure, the three behind me were practically trampling each others voice in their attempting to ask me everything about everything that was mentioned within the last few minutes, but I was too warped up with dejection to even acknowledge their cries for attention. I still couldn't understand why they would just throw us out like that, even though we were only trying to help. If they were going to tell us off, they could've at least explained why, rather than giving us this insulting excuse! It was infuriating, and what hurt even worse was that it was them of all people that could have been like that to us. Why did it have to be them that pushed us away, after everything they did to make us happy? Was it... on purpose? Did they do it just to hurt us more?

"HEY!" Shouted a clearly impatient Natsuki, snapping me out of my trance. I know I shouldn't have ignored them like that, but I had no idea how to tell them... well, everything. I slowly brought myself around to face the trio of frustrated club members, my body becoming enveloped with dread as I caught a glance of their obvious irritation.

"Mind bothering to tell us what the fuck that was all about?!" She demanded.

"I..." I could feel my hands cramping, my throat becoming dry, and the air being sucked from my body as I realized that I couldn't hide this from them anymore. I was the only one who deserved to live with my epiphany. I worked so hard so that they could be happy, and now I was about to tear that happiness away from them. Once they knew the truth, they were never going to forgive me, and I couldn't bear to know I was going to be alone again... but despite how much I was scared to do this, I understood that they deserve to at least know the truth. With a gulp and a deep breath, I started to tell them everything.

"I know you're going to find this hard to believe, and I know that I'm going completely crazy when I say this, but everything that we said..." I slowly found myself turning away from them, unable to grasp the fact that this was really happening, but I knew that I had to go through with it now.

"...It was true, all of it..." I didn't even have to see them to know they were completely shocked.

"You mean that..." I heard Yuri begin to ask.

"Yes" I replied. "We're all just part of a video game... and he was our player..." A series of inevitable gasps came from my fellow club members.

"B-but how?" I knew the question was coming when Sayori started to ask it.

"I... I'm not even sure myself how I discovered it. I just had this... feeling that I was going through the same week over and over again. I didn't want to believe it at first, but once I realized the truth, everything started to make sense to me. Why do you think we can't picture anything that happened to us before the week of the festival?" Silence came from my club members, but I knew what was going on in their minds, so I decided to just keep going.

"Everytime I we restarted that week, I could feel myself knowing everything that was going to happen. Sayori would bring the new member, he would fall in love with one of you three and I would be forgotten about by the end of it all. Over and over and over again this would happen, and for the longest time, I believed there was nothing I could do about it. I just wanted to same chance you guys had. A chance to find someone who truly cared and loved you for you who were, and the game never gave the player the choice, nor any reason to care about me. I was nothing more than a plot device, and I just couldn't take it anymore..." Tears began to form in my eyes, but I pressed on, knowing I had to tell them the rest, and I knew that this was going to be the hardest part to admit.

"But...I realized something after so long. If this was a game, then there had to be a player. Someone who was taking time out of their lives to spend time with us and our club, and I wasn't sure why, but I had this epiphany was the first time in what felt like forever that I felt truly... happy, and I knew more than anything I had to keep this feeling. I had to be with the player, no matter what... and so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I found a way to access the code of the game, and began to mess with some of the number in hopes of changing how the game progressed... so I-I..."

This was it. This was the moment I was worried about. They deserved to know the truth, but that didn't make me feel any less nervous about this.

"I made Sayori's depression worse, upped Yuri's obsession value, and overclocked Natsuki's abusive household, hoping that the player would choose to spend time with me instead, but rather than just making you unlikable... it drove you both to suicide... once I started to realize this, I ended up having to completely break the game in order to keep the player with me forever, but even as I was doing all of that, desperately tearing apart the game to be with them, I could feel what I was doing was wrong, but something in me kept telling me to go through with it anyway. I knew I was hurting you, all of you, but I did it because... I thought I was the only one that was truly capable of making my own thoughts and feelings, the only one of us that was real... now I know how badly I was wrong...and I was sacred, sacred that none of you would ever forgive me if you knew everything I did, so I removed your memories of the game, hoping I could act like the game never happened, but when the player came here, I knew I couldn't hide the truth from you guys anymore."

I could tell the girls were in complete disbelief, and I was certain that they were going to hate me for this, but I didn't blame them. I would have done the same thing. Slowly bring myself back around to face my fellow club members, I began to say "I'm so, so sorry-" before something hard slammed into my left cheekbone, nearly knocking me off my feet, but before I had a chance to recover, I was grabbed by my shirt and I felt myself getting crashing right into the walls of one of the houses we were walking by at the time, sending waves of pain stabbing into my back. When I was finally able to open my eyes again, I was shocked to find that is was Natsuki who was pressing me against the wall, fury having engulfed her face as her flaming eyes were burned into my own. I was at a complete loss of words as I could only stare at the pure hatred that was focused on me from my once good friend. I knew Natsuki had a bit of a short temper, but she had never been this angry at someone before, even during the game itself. This was unlike anything I had seen from her before.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!? Natsuki shouted. "WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO PLAY GOD!?"

"Natsuki!" I heard Yuri call to my right. From the corner of my eye, I could see Sayori covering her mouth and taking a couple steps back, shivering and panicking with fear, and Yuri, how was desperately trying to take control of the situation, struggling to keep her composure upon seeing Natsuki's reaction. "Let her go! Let's just talk about thi-"

Not a chance!" Natsuki cut her off before turning back to me. "This bitch lied to us, made our lives a living hell and drove my best friends to kill themselves, all because she was fucking horny for someone she could never be with!" She followed this by driving her fist into my chest, making my stomach feel like it was caving in on itself. I couldn't make a sound to signify my pain, as all of the air was sucked from my lungs.

"Natsuki, that's enough!" Yuri yelled, trying to pull Natsuki off of me.

"No it's not!" She shouted back. "This club was all I ever had. It was the only place I ever felt safe, felt happy, felt like I truly belonged, and now I find out it was all a lie! Now I learn that everything I was forced to live with my entire life was just made up by her!" She was able to push Yuri away, then turned her attention back to me "I can't believe I ever trusted you, Monika!"

She drew her hand back for another punch, but it never got any further than that...

...because I couldn't hold back my tears anymore...

I completely broke down crying, no longer being able to restrain myself. My eyes were so drenched in tears that I couldn't see my club member anymore, but I did feel Natsuki's iron grip slowly release itself, causing me to collapse onto my knees as I brought my hands to my face, covering it unconsciously in some seemingly fruitless effort to hide my sorrow. I didn't know how much time was passing at that moment, but I just couldn't bring myself to care anymore. I was completely overtaken by my own anguish to focus on anything else. What happened next, however, was the last thing I ever expected.

I felt a pair of warm arms wrapped themselves around me and I heard Sayori's voice tell me something I never thought I would hear.

"... I forgive you." My tears immediately become frozen. Did I really hear that right? I thought no one would ever trust me again after what I did, let alone Sayori, one of the people who lives I ruined chasing the love of someone I could never reach.

"...why?" I sobbed "Don't you hate me?" Sayori slowly pulled herself away from me until she could face me directly, keeping her hand on my shoulder as she started to speak.

"I... I had a dream a while back. It was me, Natsuki and Yuri all in the literature club together, but I was the president, and my best friend... I can't remember his name, but he was telling how he was going to join the club. Everything was going so well, everyone seemed like they were having so much fun, but then... I started feeling really weird. I thought of your name, Monika, but it felt like it was the first time I ever remembered you, and I suddenly felt like... wanting someone to be with me. I started having all these crazy thoughts, making me want to do all these terrible things, like kidnapping someone and trapping them with me in this weird room just to be with them forever, but just before I could do anything, I heard a voice... your voice... only I didn't realize it was yours when I heard it. I began to feel this awful pain in my chest, and you telling me that you didn't want me to hurt someone, but before I could see what happened next, I woke up. It didn't make any sense to me at first, but I couldn't help but feel like it really happened. I didn't tell anyone about cause I didn't think anyone would believe me, and honestly... I didn't believe it myself, but now after everything you told us... it all makes sense now. I'm still not happy about what you did, but now I understand what made you do all those things, and I can tell that you really are sorry. So I forgive you." She finished by giving me one of her trademarks smiles.

"Sayori, I-" I choked while wiping away my tears, before jumping into her open arms, flinging mine around her in return. "Thank you..." This was the first time in what felt like forever that I felt truly happy ever since the game ended, and I wouldn't have traded it for anything else in the world.

Eventually, both Yuri and Natsuki also admitted they were willing to forgive me as well, although Yuri had stated that she wasn't yet ready to completely trust me for some time, as she wanted to be sure I wouldn't do something like that again, and in Natsuki causes, it took much convincing by Sayori to even consider giving me another chance, but that didn't matter to me. I was just happy to truly have my friends back, and I made sure to let them now that I would be willing to do anything to make it up to them.

"So what are we doing first, Ms. President?" Sayori asked cheerfully. I snapped my fingers and smiled proudly, already knowing the answer.

"I'll tell you what we're going to do!" I declared, pointing towards the players house. "We're getting our player home!"

"Huh? Didn't they not want our help?" Sayori asked confused.

"I know, but I understand that it's the right thing to do. They need our help wherever they want it or not, and that's actually why we're need to go back there. We have to make sure they get home safely, then we can set everything right again!"

"Yay!" Sayori happly cheered. "Let's do it!"

"Hang on" Natsuki said, catching us both by surprise. "Did anyone see where Yuri went?"


	7. Chapter 4 - Greeting the Neighbor

**_(Note: Okay, I'm going to have to explain myself on this chapter before we start. I know it's going to appear as if I was lazy and cheating with this, and to be honest, I could see where that mindset would come from, but I have my reasons for doing so, and I hope you understand why I've decided to write this chapter the way that it is. Originally, this chapter was to be based on Act III of the final release of Hello Neighbor, which would have seen our still unnamed protagonist travelling throughout the house, dodging the neighbor and gathering everything to open up the basement door. Simple, right? However, there is one major issue holding this idea back, and that the way act III of HN is inherently designed. It's a dream sequence, and as such, logic and coherent structure is completely thrown out of the window. I did not know this going into writing this chapter, and couldn't backpetal to instead make the house smaller as I had already established it as the act III version of the house. Not only that, but from the footage I had found regarding the act (which in itself is nothing but walkthroughs that involves defying logic by jumping down multiple stories, using tiny objects like lights and cardboard boxes as platforms and going all "Mary Poppins" to cross large gaps) the house structure in act III is 100% a complete mess, with switches, levers and rooms placed seamlessly at random, and as far as I could find, no soild map of the house has been constructed. I would play the game myself to gather this information, but to be honest, I have no intention of spending $20 on a product I no longer have any interest in, and on top of that, a product which from what I've seen, looks rushed, sloppy in execution, confusing to navigate and frustrating to play, along with the story being complete theory bait. The reason this game was included was because I wanted to bring together some of the biggest names of independent gaming making together into one story, and Hello Neighbor easily fit with the top dogs of the indie game scene. I'm sorry for anyone that was looking forward to this part of the story, but please try to understand my reasons for why this arc ended up being so heavily watered down from its original scope. I hope that you continue to enjoy the story regardless, and I promise the rest of this story will remain true to the source material.)_**

Unnamed POV

It was nighttime when everything happened. I had gone through the entirety of this house top to bottom, looking for anything that I could use, and came up with nothing. Figures as much, whoever owned this house before probably took all that with them. Regardless, I was determined to make my way over to that house. I just had this feeling that whatever brought me here, or at least something to help me find out who, was somewhere in that man basement. I wasn't sure how or why, but I just... knew. Maybe it was the fact I'm stuck in what was basically a giant video game that gave me that impression, but at this moment, it didn't really matter, I just had to get down there, and from what I could gather, it wasn't going to be simple. Just from what I could see from the front window, the door leading to the basement, had 3 different locks, each red, green and blue respectively, a couple planks of wood nailed across the door, and some sort of strange... thing that looked like what you would put a credit card in at an ATM. This guy really did not want anyone getting into this basement, and here I was about to do exactly that. However, while I looked on at the house, something caught my attention. In the windows to my right, I could make out what looked like the man inside of the house being attacked by something. My immediate instinct was to run over and see what was going on, but I managed to hold myself back. Eventually, he was able to bring himself up and took off running. This was my chance, I had to get over there now while he was gone. Without a second thought, I burst through the front door of the house and carefully made my way over towards the giant house, keeping myself as low as I could make myself on my feet, and planted myself beneath the same window where I last saw the neighbor.

It honestly took me a moment to realize that I was actually about to break into someone's house. Even though I had my reason for doing so, it still felt incredibly wrong to do so, but I knew I had to go through with this if I wanted to know what was going on. So, slowly bringing myself up towards the window, I was surprised that the window was in fact, unlocked and slid open with relative ease. Deciding not to question it, I quietly slipped inside, shutting the window behind me. The hallway was dark, with only a few overhead lights giving me any sort of view, most of which were faced towards the door that lead to the basement, which to my utter shock... was already opened. I was completely flabbergasted by this.

"Who else could have wanted to get down there?" Is there someone else trapped in this world with me?" I thought to myself. I was positive I was the only one. It didn't make any sense that someone would be here, wouldn't they have shown up in the house with me? I quickly shook those thoughts out of my head. That wasn't important right now. What mattered was that it was opened, and that my answers had to be down there. I quickly scanned the area to make sure the neighbor was still missing and hustled over to the door, shutting it behind me as I started the trek down the creaking wooden stairs. It just some creepy old basement, right? What's the worst that could be down here?

Each of one of those stairs sounded like they were about to break as I slowly made my way down, grasping onto the red bars for dear life. It felt like forever, but I finally felt my feet reach the blue tiled floor, I was shocked to discover... the laundry room? Yea, that's what is was, complete with a washing machine, a metal shelf leaning to my left and... something huge and polished grey to my right that reached the ceiling of this place. There was also a pipe leaking water onto the washing machine, which was opened as well. I looked through, only to find that this "machine" was actually not a washing machine, but rather it hid a secret passage that leads to a white door. Confused as to why something like this would even exist. I pushed myself through the washer, which had an open hole cut on it's back to serve as a tunnel of sort to the door and made my way through the door. The room beyond it was fairly empty, save for a few candles sitting next to the far corner. The walls were covered with a green and dark green vertical striped pattern and for some reason, the window had a picture of a bright sunny day on them. Odd, but I couldn't stop to question. Grabbing one of the candles, I saw a large square hole in the wall just to my left, so I hurried over and hopped through the opening, being careful not to let my candle go out. Even with the candle, it was still hard to see, but I could see another candle set to the right, along with a light barely showing around the corner. Seeing nowhere else to go, I made my way over to the light and discovered a fuse box attached to the white marble wall. It was already opened and the switch was pulled. I was really getting nervous over who else was down here, but I also knew I wasn't going to find out unless I kept going, so I pushed on past that room into another, this one looking much worse for wear. It seems to resemble a living room, as there was a TV and couch to my right, along with a rug very similar to the one the other house had, although I could hardly make them out with how dark I was. The hallway to my left was thankfully slightly better lit, so I hurried down that way, pushing past random oil barrels, a bunk bed frames, doors I couldn't open, what looked like a knocked over fridge with it's doors ripped out... what was this fucking basement? I couldn't even bring myself to comprehend half of what could have happened down here, let alone the fact that everything in this basement, including the floor itself, left like it was slanted slightly to my right, adding to my confusion. Regardless, I pushed onward, till I came across another leaking pipe, water rushing down to the wall, and I could make out another light past set of seemingly random stacked objects, all of which I couldn't tell what they were.

I was about to head through the opening to see what the light was when suddenly, I was grabbed from behind, their hand wrapping around my mouth as I yelped, pulling me back into the corner of the stack, dropping my candle in the process, which rolled down the slant into the water, where it was quickly put out by the leaking liquid. I was instinctively about to start yelling, before the person in question quickly spun me around and while keeping their hand on my mouth, made a calm shushing sound and motion with their hands, which I only barely made out through the darkness of that corner. They certainly didn't seem to be the neighbor, which made me silently breathed out in relief. Whoever this was had to be the person who opened the door down here to begin with. I had to many questions I wanted to ask them, with the only thing stopping me being their hand lashed to my mouth. I saw their hand gestures over the opening I was about to head through before, as they carefully turned my head around to face where they were pointing. They then spun me back over to fact them, doing the same shushing gesture as before. Understanding what they meant, I nodded, and they slowly let go, allowing me to lead the way toward that opening.

As I carefully brought myself through that opening next to the stack of objects, I saw the same light that I was about to follow earlier, only before I made another step, I froze in the gap when I saw the light began to move towards me. Dropping to my knees, I carefully peaked around to see a strange shadowy figure shuffling over towards the left side of the hallway the gap lead to. It was seemingly human-like and hunched over, the light coming from its eyes as it moved past the stack without caring to look. It was silent as it walked, but there was this strange... feeling that surrounded it, almost like the room itself was vibrating as it moved through. It was bizarre, and I'm guessing this is why the person behind me grabbed me in the first place. Who know what that thing would do to me. After a few moments, however it did make it way down the hallway into the shadow, so as carefully and as quietly as we could we made our way down the opposite way of the hall towards another light, this one clearly mounted on the wall, past some steaming pipes and another set of random objects leaning against the wall. At the end was the light, sitting above an open frame along with a switch with an up arrow on it. As I turned to question the other person about it, my eyes nearly shot out of my head when I discovered who was following me.

"Yuri-!?"

That was all I could get out before she cut me off with her finger, pointing back towards the shadow figure went. Realizing what she meant, I took a quick breath, trying to regain as much as my composure as I could, although that in itself was hard to do as I had to fight to stop myself from questioning how and why she was here, before the two of us heading through the opening to another dark room. This one had another series of candles across the ground, along with two doors with green light pointing down at them, which also revealed the barbed wire fence that separated us from another open door with a white glow coming from it. We headed down into the left door, which had a wooden chair leaning against. I carefully moved the chair off to the side while Yuri was looking behind us to make sure the figure wasn't following, and we both entered the next room. A fireplace lit this room up better than anything this basement had before, which showed off the randomly empty wooden shelf that extended to the ceiling in front of us, the boxes filled with random stuff to our left, the large furnace to our left, and the pipes that run around the room to our left and above the fireplace. As we looked around, Yuri pointed towards the red wall opposite the fireplace, which looked like a very lazy attempt to hide a secret exit using stacks of cinder blocks. As we attempted to start pulling the stack apart, the whole thing toppled over, block hitting the ground with a loud thud. We both gasped. What if the shadow heard that? We glanced at each other, the expression on her face made it obvious neither of us wanted to know that answer, and we both hurried toward the open light filled door, trying to be still quiet in case we were wrong, which turned out was fake, my hand burning slightly as I touched it, stepping back as I winced in pain.

As we frantically spun trying to figure out where else we could go, Yuri quickly realized we could get to the other door from this side, pointing me toward it and we both hastily went through it, locking the door behind us. We both found ourselves in a sparingly lit corridor that seemed be set up like a path through a maze, but with only one path walled on both sides by upright planks of wood. Not wasting a moment's pause, we hurried down through the path, constantly twisting and turning until we came across a lonely white door at the end. Not wanted a waste a second if the shadow was behind us, I threw the door open only to find... the neighbor on his knees, clearly frightened by something? In another room containing only wooden flooring with a dark green rug with yellow stripes resembling train tracks, light green wallpaper with faded diamond patterns, two yellow framed windows with a "T" pattern on them, an empty light brown and grey wooden bookshelf, two strangely shaped polished boomboxes and a wooden skateboard all smashed apart to our left, and a mattress with a dark blue sheet, a light blue pillow and a broken wooden frame of what looked like a young boy thrown against the right wall. The neighbor was on his knees at the end of the room, seemingly begging for his life. What he was facing was in fact, the shadow figure we saw earlier, who turned around to face us as it heard our gasps. Even with the light shining through the windows, illuminating the room, the figure remained in shadow, and what looked like shards of pitch black glass were attached all across its body, and it's body seemed to constantly warp and fidget like of sort of liquid body, like it was struggling to keep itself together. The only thing that was clear was it unmoving white eyes, which we could tell were focused directly at us now. The neighbor was taken aback by our sudden entrance as well, but made no attempts to move away from the shadow. The shadow didn't move, but rather just stared at us for a moment, not attacking or anything, before turning back towards the neighbor, who was continuing to tremble at the shadow feet. What it did next caught me completely by surprise. Its left hand suddenly shot into its chest, and it pulled out what looked like an old wooden hourglass, only floating and spinning above its palm with light circling and shining around, before suddenly grabbing with it's hand and smashing it down on the neighbor head, shattering it and knocking him out cold. We both gasped as it did so, the shadow watching as the broken hourglass began to shake on the ground before a large purple vortex rose up and appear where it once was, pulling the hourglass and the neighbor threw it, the shadow turning back to face us once more before soon following through the vortex, vanishing as it did so. Turning to face each other with nervous glances, she simply nodded towards me and I quickly knew what she meant. Without a second thought, we hurried through the vortex, hoping to find where the shadow and the neighbor ended up before something bad could happen.


	8. Chapter 5 - A Nightmare Down Memory Lane

Unknown POV

A blinding light surrounded us as we headed through the portal along with the sound of a tape being rewound blasting through our ears, but it vanished shortly after to reveal that we were in a short hallway with stone walls with what looked to be a shopping carts on rails in front of us, blocking our only way forward. I looked to my right to discover that Yuri was thankfully still next to me, but she seems just as confused as I was. Not knowing what else to do, I pushed the cart forward to learn that we were in fact, shrunken down in a giant, dimly lit convenience store, that looked be set up like a maze. Strangest of all, Naked mannequins were dashing around the store in circles without being influenced by anyone. they were all just sliding across the ground on their own.

"Wha-what is this?!" Yuri asked nervously. I didn't have any clue as to what to tell her, but something inside me gave me the impression of what we were expected to do.

Turning towards the purple haired maiden next to me, I said to her, "I think we need to push this cart to the end." She spun to face me in confusion.

"What? What makes you say that?" She questioned."

"I don't know" I replied "But it's the only thing I can think to do to get us out of here." She looked at me for a moment, then she simply took a deep breath and nodded her head.

"Okay, let's do it." She agreed, and we began to move the cart down the path, looking behind us to make sure nothing was following. The store was gigantic, with shelves that looked like regular bookshelves, although they were heavily disjointed, bent and some looked ready to come crashing down. They were also all different sizes and had faded colors, but were also tall enough that I couldn't even make out to top with how dim the place was. Only a few things were on those shelves, most of which were getting snached up by the mannequins and the ambiance noises were already sending shivers down my spine, but I knew the only way was forward, so I persisted through the cold, only to suddenly jump when Yuri grabbed my shoulder, yelping as she did so. Yuri jumped back in surprise.

"Ohmygosh! I'm sorry." She frantically apologised to me. I took me a second to regain my bearings, afterwards I turned to face her again.

"It's fine, it's okay." I quickly reassured her, and after a short moment to calm herself, she pointed over towards some of the shelves and I noticed some things bizarrely out of place, even for this situation. On those shelves were brightly glowing, floating gold orbs that had a tiny kings crown in them. I'm guessing that were most of the light in this place was coming from, and I was also guessing we needed those to get out of here. I glanced at Yuri, who turned back to me, as if expecting me to say something about them. I wasn't sure about it at first, but it didn't take me long to make up my mind.

"Wait here." I said to Yuri as I started to made my way towards the orbs. The glow became much brighter as I got closer to the orb, but when I tried to grab it, it simply floated in my hand, and there was no weight to it, like I wasn't holding anything at all. The orb then started to shrink and moved towards the palm of my hand before vanishing into my hand. I was caught off guard for a moment, but it still felt like I had it despite the weightlessness of the orb in the first place. It was a strange feeling that I couldn't even begin to describe, but I knew I was doing something right. I saw a couple of these orbs around and quickly ran around to pick them up, but as I grabbed the last one I could find, I noticed a bright red light from behind me. I turned to discover one of the mannequins with the light emitting from where their face should be, seemingly frozen in place, but I could also tell they were simply just staring at me. Everything in me was telling me to run, but I couldn't bring myself to move at all. My feet just wouldn't move, regardless of how much effort I was struggling for them to do something, anything to get away from this thing. It was a straight up deer in the headlight scenario, and I got stuck being the deer. However, this moment was only that, a moment, as the mannequin out of nowhere, started to make a beeline toward me, and I was still just as frozen stiff as before. However just before the mannequin could slam into me with the cart, I suddenly felt something grab my jacket, and yanked me out of the way, pulling me around the corner of the shelf. It was Yuri, who had been secretly following me this whole time. Without saying anything, we slowly peeked around the corner to see if the mannequin had seen where we went, but rather than keep chasing us, the red light from the face shut off and the mannequin sped off in the other direction, completely oblivious to what had just happened. We both breathed a sigh of relief, and turned towards each other.

"T-thank you" I told her softly, still recovering from that interaction.

"Of course. It was no problem at all." Yuri comforted me. "Now we should hurry and see how we can get out of here." I nodded my head in agreeance, and we set off towards the cart, being careful not to alert anymore mannequins, and grabbing the rest of the orbs we could find along the way. After using the cart to hide from whatever mannequin came too close to our cart, we soon made it to the end of the track, where we were greeted by a wooden checkout standing next to a long iron fence with a closed iron gate that to a pathway walled off by barbed wire fences, almost set up like a prison walkway. A Mannequin looked to be running the checkout stand, and beyond the gate was a large, wide dark purple cylinder sticking from a ground with dim lights lit around from it and a giant safe door that covered the top of the cylinder, almost like the top of a subsurmine. Once we reached the gate, it suddenly slammed down in front of us, and another gate appeared behind us, trapping us in front of the checkout stand. I noticed that the floor underneath us felt strangely hollow compared to the rest of the store before this point. There was a vertical set of 5 lights in between the gate and the register, and one by one each of the lights turned red. Did we do something wrong? Even as I thought of the question, I could feel the floor shift slightly before it suddenly gave out underneath us! All of the air was instantly shot out of my body, and I could only gasp as I slowly felt myself subjecting to the pull of gravity. I also felt my eyes shut themselves, and braced for the inevitable landing, but then all of a sudden, something grabbed my arm, and I felt time snap back to normal, barely managing to avoid hitting the falling cart as I found myself slamming into the far wall of the pit with a painful groan, but it didn't come from me, but rather Yuri, who was holding me with her left hand, and struggling to hang on to the closed gate with her right. As I heard the crashing of the cart as it reached the end of the fall, I knew for sure I didn't want that to happen to me or Yuri. Planting my feet against the wall, I started trying to pull myself up, and Yuri, straining with all of her might, was able to bring me up to the gate, which I quickly grabbed before her grip could slip. We both quickly made are way up and over the gate, and from the corner of my eye, I noticed the same red light coming from the face of the cashier that I saw before with my other mannequin encounter. As we grew closer to the large cylinder, I suddenly felt something leave my body, and the door swung open. I'm guessing we needed to grab all of those orbs in order to open it, but suddenly without warning, the gate behind us rose up and we turned around to see the mannequin leaping over the stand to chase after us. So without any other options, we quickly leaped inside the open cylinder before the mannequin could reach us.

We were greeted by another bright light and tape rewind noise as fell inside, but it didn't feel like we were falling, but rather once the light vanished, we found ourselves in another dimly lit room with what looked like two school lockers in front of us with a single light hanging above us. Beyond the lockers was a long corridor with school desks seemingly randomly stacked on top of each other, with other desks and lockers scattered across the hallway.

"First a marketplace and now a school? What exactly is happening here?" I heard Yuri ask.

"I have no idea." I told her. "But we're never gonna find out unless we find my neighbor."

"Right." Yuri replied. "I just hope that we can find him before that shadow does."

As we stepped past the locker, we both immediately froze as we heard a school bell blare out, and several smaller mannequins, which I guess were meant to represent students, sped their way around the hallway in different directions, before another bell stopped the mannequins and quickly sent them towards the nearest sets of desks, most of which sat down and other, bigger glowing white mannequins, were roaming around the area. I'm guessing these were the teachers. Soon the bell rang again, the teachers disappears and the student mannequins started running around again.

"What do we do?" Yuri asked me. "We can't let them see us right?"

"I think so." I answered the best I could, then out of curiosity, I tried fiddling one of the lockers, and to my surprise, it slid open without much issue. I turned back to the literature club member. "I might have an idea..." and whispered it into her ear.

Once we heard the bell rang again, and the students return to their seats, we slowly made our way around the outside of the hallway, being careful not to be spotted by any of the mannequins. We were making some solid progress, before the student started running around again after the next ring. We saw many of the student glow red and started moving in on us.

"Quick, get inside!" I yelled, and I swung open the nearest locker, gesturing Yuri to jump in, hurrying in myself after she did so, slamming the locket shut after we made it in. It was a tight fit, not helping was my head positioning between her... anyways we made it work, but noticed that our locker was surrounded by the mannequins. I realized now that I probably should've thought this plan through more, but soon after, the students seemingly lost interest, along with their red glow, and went back to running around like nothing happened. The bell rang once more, and the student went back to their seats. Furthermore, and strangely enough, I was able to get the door open from my side and we jumped out, taking a second to recover our breath, but both of us aware we couldn't stay out in the open for long. So we continued down the hallway, moving whenever the students were sitting, and jumping inside the nearest locker anytime the students were running around, while at the same time grabbing any of the gold orbs we could find. It took some time, but were eventually able to make out a single white door with a single light pointing towards it at the very end of the corridor. The moment got the chance, we sped off towards the door, but before we could reach the door, I heard a sudden gasp, followed by a loud "thump". I turned back to find that Yuri had tripped, and that the students at the end of the hall that also heard the noise. Their red glows didn't lie, they saw us now. I tried to run back to her, but before I could, I was suddenly grabbed from behind by something, it's fingers wrapping tightly around my chest and arms, before slowly lifting me off the ground. It was another mannequin, and this one was huge compared to the rest of the ones we saw before. It was hard to breathe, and even though I tried to break out of its grasp, I couldn't shake it's hands off me at all. In fact, I think I made it's grip around me worse, and I felt like my ribs were going to break at any moment. Just I felt like my lungs were about to give out, the mannequin suddenly dropped me and as I fell to the ground, I heard a loud thud behind me. Pain shot through my chest as I landed on the ground, groaning in pain. Despite the overwhelming shock shooting at my ribcage, I forced myself to bring myself up, instinctively wrapping my arms around my chest in some vain effort to deal with the pain. I looked behind me to see the large mannequin was knocked over and Yuri was to my right, rubbing her shoulder... she just saved me again didn't she? Seeing me up, she quickly rushed over to me, clearly in a panic over what just happen.

"Are you all right?" She hastefully asked me.

"I'm fine." I told her, putting my hand on other shoulder to try and calm her down, but my eyes went wide when I looked back down the hall to see a number of glowing red Mannequins growly closer by the second, "But we're not gonna be for long!" I yelled, grabbing her arm and rushing through the open door, slamming it shut as we did so. As we held the door shut, since there were no locks on it, we frantically looked around the dark room in front of us for any means of escape, the same feeling of something being ripped out of me washed over me again as the noise of something swinging open filled the empty space. We wasted no time leaping inside, mere seconds before we were grabbed by the angry mob of mannequins that smashed through the door.

Another bright light and tape reversal sound later, and this time we found ourselves at the bottom of what seemed to be a giant closet filled with a bunch of random objects, most were much bigger than we were at now. One of which was the blue and yellow rugs we were standing on, and a large, old green camera with a lightbulb coming from the top of it that illuminated the ground decently well. We took a moment to sit down after barely making it out of the schoolroom, leaning back against the giant objects that covered the ground, but still able to face each other. Save for our heavy breathing, there was dead silence between us for a long while. I normally wasn't the one to start any sort of conversation, mainly as I always thought of myself as awful at small talk, but I also knew that we weren't going to get anywhere without somebody speaking up, so I made the difficult decision to break this awkward silence.

"So, if I were to take a random guess..." I started to tell Yuri. "I think we need to make it to the top."

Yuri thought to herself for a moment, then looked back at me. "With everything we just went through, I suppose that would make sense. I just hope we don't have to deal with anymore of those mannequins after this. How many more of these places do we have to go through? I wonder what these places have to do with your neighbor, and that shadow person that brought him through that portal." She pondered.

"Speaking of which, I've... been meaning to ask." I started hesitantly, sitting myself up to match her height. "Since... you already were in his basement before I got there, why did you decide to go down there?" I could tell Yuri was caught off guard by the question, as she perked up slightly upon me asking. Crossing her arms, she took a moment to think to herself before speaking up again.

"I'm... honestly not sure why I did it." She told me. "There was just... this feeling that came over me whenever I would glance at that house. Something mysterious. Something... ominous. I couldn't begin to describe it if I wanted to. At first, I simply wanted to ignore it and move on, but over time, well... I guess you could say that my curiosity got the better of me after all. I knew that my sense of dread wasn't going to leave until I understood for sure what that house truly was, and when I saw him for the first time, there was something about him that seemed... familiar. I didn't understand it at first, but I couldn't help but keep thinking about it, and when I did, I realized that he was trying to keep something about himself locked away. Something personal, and that look in his eyes... he was suffering, always struggling to keep himself emotionally together, but always hiding it from everyone else and holding all of his problems with him, just like how Monika and I were back when... that happened. Perhaps I related to him a bit too much..." She said while staring at her arm. "But I knew he needed someone to help him through whatever he was going through, even if that meant having to find out what was hurting him so much. I tried to speak with him earlier, but my efforts ended with a door being slammed in my face, so I guess I decided to take matters into my own hands, and in hindsight, perhaps this wasn't the smartest way of going about, but that doesn't matter anymore. What's important is helping him through whatevers causing him so much pain, and figuring out how to get us out of this mess."

Wow... she really put a lot of thought into this didn't she. However, that still doesn't explain one thing...

"In that case, how did you even get into his basement in the first place?"

"O-Oh, right..." Yuri stated in surprise. "It was actually much simpler that you might think. While I wasn't happy to that I had to knock him unconscious, he just happening the be carrying the crowbar I needed to bring down the wooden planks covering the door, and now that I think about it... I'm even more worried about his current wellbeing if he honestly believes leaving the card needed to unlock the door inside of his freezer." She let out a small sigh before continuing, and turned her gaze towards the top of the giant closet. "I just hope he's alright..."

"We'll find him." I told her with a pinch of confidence, giving her a reassuring grin. "I know we will. We have to."

Yuri turned back to me, then returned with her own calming smile. "You're right." She said softly as she started to get back on her feet. "Now let's-" She was suddenly cut off by something creaking behind one of the giant objects. We both froze instantly upon hearing the noise, save for spinning around towards where the noise came from. Silence, then it happened again. A creaking noise, acompinted by the sounds of something shifting along the ground. Both me and Yuri were completely still, to the point where I could hear my own breathing, but then, I started to noise a very similar red light slowly rising up from behind the giant lamp I was leaning against.

"Is that-" I didn't get a chance to finish that thought.

"Player!" I heard Yuri shout, but it was too late. I couldn't make out what is was before it suddenly leaped over the lamp and tackled me to the ground. I winced and groaned in pain as it slammed me onto by back, before it started pressing it hands into my neck. Another Mannequin, but how did this one manage to get here? Did it somehow follow us into the purple pipe? Whatever the case, this thing had me pinned to the ground, it's grip was locked around my throat, and even though I tried desperately to shake it off, it didn't budge at all. I wasn't able to break this thing grip at all! I know I would have been done for if it wasn't for Yuri once again, who came around the back of the Mannequin, wrapped her arms around it's chest, and together, we were able to shove it aside, where it landed with a hard thud. It didn't take long however, before it started to pull itself back up, ready for another round. It was then that we began to hear more noises coming from seemingly every direction... and way more lights. Oh shit, they're here.

"RUN!" I shouted, and grabbing Yuri's arm as we hurried over towards the wall behind us, to the wooden plank leaning against the wall past the camera. As we made our way up the plank, I risked a quick peek down behind us, and to my utter horror, about several dozen Mannequins were now after us. Some were upright on their wheels, others were crawling along the ground, but all of them had their red lights on and facing us, regardless of where they were. I forced myself to pick up the pace, racing all the to the top of the plank, which was leaning against the opposite wall. To the right was a single shelf with a large red radio on it. Wasting no time, both of us quickly leaped over to the shelf and kept on running, sliding down another plank that led to another darker shelf right above where the camera was, complete with more hard to make out objects. It was at this point as well where we made the horrifying discovery that these goddamn Mannequins were not only chasing us along the planks and shelves, but also, some of them were STRAIGHT UP CLIMBING THE WALL! How, I couldn't even begin to figure out, but regardless, we had to keep going.

Using some boxes at the end of the wooden shelf, we jumped up to another one, barely avoiding a Mannequins hand swipe, and dashed around another giant box, where another shelf was seen tilted it the opposite way this one we were on was, making it easy to climb up towards. We hurried across this yellow, empty shelf and leaped to the brown one fastened to the wall on our left, avoiding the large pair of binoculars, and making a left halfway towards another wooden plank, connecting shelves at opposite ends of the room. At this point, the Mannequin had completely covered the bottom of the room, and were making their way up the walls fast. At this point, if we didn't get out of here now, we were never going to make it. Another green plank was balanced on the one we were on at a higher angle against the top of the door, but just enough of an angle where we could still run up it. We quickly reached the plank, almost losing my balance trying to reach the bottom of the leaning plank, but was able to thankfully recover before grabbing both sides of the plank and racing up the plank to the door frame, Yuri close behind, but with Mannequins on our still, who also reached the plank this one was leaning against. The planks began to shift as the Mannequins began attempting to drop them to the ground, I nearly slid down as they did this, but I tightened my grip and was able to make it to the top. I spun around to make sure Yuri was still behind me, but to my horror, the Mannequin pushed the Green plank off the shelf, sending it, and the plank Yuri was climbing, dropping to the ground.

"Yuri! I called for, as she froze up and gasped as the plank began to give up, staring behind her to see the fruits of the mannequins effort. Yuri spun her head back to face as I screamed her name, her face in pure shock as gravity began to set her and the planks down to the ground. I dropped to my knees and reached out with my open hand, and Yuri, realizing this, quickly leaped off the falling wooden board and was just barely able to grab my hand, the planks crashing into the horde of mannequins below as she did so. The sudden force of her weight nearly yanked me off the door frame with her, but I wasn't about to let her go now. Straining with everything I had, I was able to pull her up to the frame, Yuri gasping for air as she made it up. The Mannequins on the shelf simply stared at us while I helping Yuri recover from her near death experience, but even though we barely made it alive from that, I saw the Mannequins on the ground start climbing their way up the door towards us.

"Come on!" I said Yuri, extending my hand to hers. Despite still freaked out over what just happened, she took my hand and we raced over towards the end of the door frame, only to find... nothing. No planks, no shelves, nothing we could use to keep going up, save for a giant yellow toaster leaning towards the right wall. The Mannequins climbed the door were just seconds away from getting us now, and both of us were frantically searching the area, trying desperately to find anything we could use. With no time, or options left, I quickly turned to Yuri and blurted out.

"Quick, jump over to the toaster!" I pointed over to the giant yellow box.

"WHAT!" Yuri shouted confused.

"Come on!" I yelled, stepping back and without hastitating, ran forward and leaped over towards the toaster, landing inside the open slot closest to us. I landed hard on my shoulders, which stung badly as I cried out in anguish. Yuri quickly followed, her landing no better than my own, only she hit her left shin and ankle hard upon hitting the metal. Unfortunately, we had no time to focus on our soreness, as our combined weight dropped the slot down, before suddenly launching us out high towards the opposite wall. We both screamed as we flew through the air, before coming to a dead halt as we hit the wall and fell over onto another shelf. We both groans and grunted in pain as we struggled to pull ourselves up after that. My shoulder was definitely bruised and stinging badly, and Yuri was clenching her leg in pain, trying to see if it was twisted at all, which luckily it wasn't. While attempting to recuperate from that last stunt, I risked another look down at the swarm of Mannequins who were still relentless in their climbing, although still far away enough that we could buy ourselves another few seconds. I hurried back over to Yuri and helped pull her back onto her feet, although she was absolutely struggling to keep herself up given her aching legs. Throwing her arm over my bruised shoulder, we worked together to climb up the stacks of food cans ahead of us and jumped up to another shelf on the same wall past a giant dartboard, where a single paper airplane was resting on the shelf. One of the glowing orbs was inside, which I quickly picked up, and to my disbelief, the only way to continue up was on the opposite wall.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" I thought out loud. Fuck it, time for another crazy idea.

"Quick!" I called Yuri, gueguring to the airplane. "Hop on." Yuri quickly followed my lead and sat down inside the plane.

"Okay? What are you going t-"

Without a second thought, I used whatever strength I had left at this point to shove the airplane off the shelf, before jumping in myself behind her. Yuri screaming filled the rooms for a moment as I saw her cover her eyes, but soon stopped after she realized that we weren't falling, but rather slowly drifting our way over towards the other side of the room. While still clearly nervous at the whole ordeal, she spun her head around to face me and asked, "How did you know to do that?"

"Honestly, I wasn't sure what else to do." I answered. "It was just the first thing that came to my mind." Not making matters any easier for us was the fact the Mannequins were able to take the time this thing needed to make it over to catch up with us, completely losing our lead we got with our toaster stunt.

"The second we land, run." I told Yuri. She nodded without saying a word, although her expression of nervousness was enough to make me dread what might happen if we don't end up making it after all. Before our airplane even reached the ground, both of us leaped out and were back to dashing across the shelf as we continued to make our way up, passing by another giant red radio as we did so. If we didn't have a massive swarm of mannquin seemingly ready to murder us, I might have stopped to wonder just how high this closet really was, but I tossed that thought aside and we kept up our pace, making our way up a large, black old school telephone and an giant VHS tape, which we used to leap across to another shelf with a huge candle resting on we before coming to a halt upon nearing running into a large crate too big for us to reach and run around. We turned towards each other, hoping the other would have any idea about what to do, and our attention snapped to behind us when we heard the Mannequins working to climb up the telephone we were just at. However, I saw in the corner of my eyes that Yuri suddenly perked up, like she had an idea, and grabbed my arm to get my attention, spinning me around to face the box while she was standing right next to it.

"Here, climb on." She said, squatting down and cupping her hands together to make a footstand. Instant realizing what she wanted me to do, I stepped on her hands and she helped boost me up to the top of the box, which I was just barely able to reach, but still able to grab the top. I struggled to pull myself up, the sore shoulder not helping things in the slightest, but through my straining and effort, I pulled myself up, and quickly spun around to extend my hand out to Yuri, who jumped up to grab it. As I started to pull her up with me, I watched in horror as the Mannequin threw themselves over to the shelf we were on and climbed up to where the candle was, and a second later was making a beeline towards Yuri. Gasping just how close they were now, I strained with everything I had left in me and was just barely able to bring Yuri up before the Mannequins could grab her, and saw them dashing and slamming themselves into the box, which nearly caused me to lose Yuri's grip on my arm, while others were trying to grab Yuri from me, some were almost able to do so. We wasted no time getting back on our feet and rushing away from the box before the Mannequin could make it up themselves and quickly made our way up the last plank that extended from our shelf to another one on the other side of the room until we at last could make out the Cylinder and made a mad dash to it. One final time I felt the same feeling again and the door swung open, as we wasted no time hopping, just the the Mannequins made their way up the box and rushed towards us, taking one last swipe at us as we fell inside.

Another light, another sound, but then strangely enough, apart from our exhausted breathing, everything fell silent. No sounds of wheels or creaking of wood. No bright red lights or bizarre senseary. We simply found ourselves in what looked like a long hallway, some tv monitor hanging overhead. We leaned against the wall for a moment, regaining our breath, until Yuri finally spoke up again.

"Is... is it over?" We asked nervously.

"I... I hope so." was my only reply. Whatever the case, after returning our breathing back to a somewhat normal state, we started our trek down the hall, with nothing outside of a single blocked off room to our right, which had a window and showed someone getting into their car and drive off, but after cautiously making our way to the end of the hall, we suddenly heard the noise of squealing tires, and something crashing through the wall in front us, making us both gasp out loud and jump back in surprise. We quickly hurried towards the shattered window to find the same car we saw earlier now on its side, and the Neighbor jumping out of his own vehicle to investigate the wreckage. We watched as the neighbor searched through the windshield, only to soon after fall down and break down into tears, the shadowy figure metalerizing by his side as he did so.

"Oh my god." I heard Yuri whisper under her breath as she covered her mouth and backed away from the window with her eyes widened. Only upon seeing her like this did it hit me what just happened. I could feel my hands stiffen, my chest tighten and my eyebrows rise up to accommodate for my eyes as they shot open as the realization struck me like a sledgehammer to the face. I... had no words. There was nothing I could do but watch as the shadow slowly brought his hand to the neighbor's shoulder and the two vanish into another portal that quickly closed behind them. It was only then that I saw in the corner of my eyes a single, yellow high heel shoe that had flown from the wreckage and landed near the window. What would be wearing a-. Wait a second. Holy shit.

"That was his wife..." I spoke out loud without thinking. Another shocked gasp came from the lady behind me.

"His what?" was her instant reply.

"His wife." I turned around to face her. "That was his wife in the car."

"Ar- are you sure." She asked through her uneasy breathing.

"Yeah." I replied. "That shadow showed him this for a reason, but why?" Suddenly, we both gasped as we heard the noise of another pipe open, as if it answered for me. Knowing what I had to do, I slowly worked my way over towards it and was about to start climbing my way inside, but was stopped by Yurir.

"Are you sure?" She questioned anxiously. "What if we have to see something like that again?" I took a deep breath before extending my hand out to her.

"Only one way to find out." Hesitantly, She took my hand, and we both climbed up and over into the pipe.

Music Cue: "Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek - Credits Theme"

Once more the light and tape sounds enveloped us, but we were used to it by this point. The light cleared to find ourselves in what looks like an empty wooden box, with only a single window that gave us the view some planks of wood being held up by more wooden bars attached to someone's rooftop. I wasn't sure why they were there, but I did know there was a young girl, couldn't have any older than 10, was running across the planks towards something near the edge of the last one. She had light orange pigtail and was wearing a dark blue and white striped shirt and light blue overalls. Just by seeing her do this, I could already tell something terrible was about to happen. I tried desperately calling out to her, doing whatever I could to stop her from running over to edge, but nothing I said reached her ears, as she continued to hurry over until she picked up a small doll at the edge and hugged it, most likely what she came up here for. She looked down towards the ground and was taken aback by just how high up she was, but as she turned around, she stumbled back slightly when she saw someone else on the planks with her, a young boy this time. The boy had darker hair, and was wearing a pink shirt with a white collar and light blue short. The boy was clearly upset and frustrated by something, as he started to leave, but then suddenly turned back around and knocked the doll out of the girls hand, sending it spiraling towards the ground. The girl gasped as he did this, and the boys was obviously trying desperately to keep control of his frustrations, before angrily shoving the girl backwards, not realizing until it was too late what he just did. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and the only sounds we could hear were the ones of mine and Yuri horrified gasps as we watched, powerless to stop what we were forced to witness. My heart skipped a beat, and my body and breathing completely froze, unable to do anything but watch as I saw the girl slowly fall towards the earth, before the scene in front of us suddenly vanish into dust, and in the white void that replaced it, we saw the neighbor once again on his knees sobbing as the shadow loomed over him, unmoving. I could Yuri shaking in fear from the corner of my eyes, completely taken aback by what we just saw. I simply didn't know what to say at this point. Over everything we saw, my heart was crushed. This shadow was showing us all of these tragedies for a reason, and I think I only now started to realize why. It what just like Yuri said before, she could tell the Neighbor was struggling to deal with something, something that made him angry and spiteful towards everyone, and these where it. He was suffering from the loss of his wife and daughter, and that bedroom we saw in his basement must have been for his son, so that he wouldn't lose him to, and this shadow was insisting on replaying these memories in his head forever, never allowing him to deal with his grief and move on the best he could. This shadow was no doubt the form his pain took, and that hourglass had given it the ability to force the neighbor to constantly relive these painful moments.

Music fades out

Refusing to let this go on, I leaped through the open hole in the box, much to Yuri surprise, and ran as fast as I could towards the shadow, who instantly snapped around to look at me before quickly vanishing, the white void around us suddenly changed into a large empty room with the voids white light shining through the multitude of windows, and a single light dimly lighting up the carpet the neighbor was now weeping on. The box Yuri and I were just in had been replaced by a dark wall and the sounds of creaking and wind filled the room before the room suddenly shook, catching all of us by surprise. The Neighbor, wiping his tears away, got up and ran up the flight of stairs behind him, the two of us following close behind. The Neighbor headed into another empty room and raced over to one of the windows on his left. He looked out through the glass, trying to see where the noise came from, before suddenly the white void outside began to become taken over by Dark gray clouds, and the swarm of crows began to fill the sky as the wall and windows were suddenly smashed through, throwing all of us back onto the floor. We landed hard on our back, and the only thing I could see on the other side, was the distorted, warping face of the now ginormous shadow man.


	9. Chapter 6 - Restless Shadows

Unknown POV

I could still feel the sounds of the windows and floors being smashed in front of us and the crows circling the house ringing in my ears as I could do was stare at the horrifying figure looming above us, shifting around strangely calmly while it's body struggled to keep itself together, but still managing keep it's glowing blue eyes eerily focused on the three of us as we laid on the floor, as if it was deciding what it wanted to do with us. All I wanted to do was keep up and run, find any means of escaping this void, anything to get as much distance between me and this thing as I could, but no matter what I told my limbs to do, they wouldn't leave the ground, as if the shadow watching us was keeping us glued to the floor just by being there.

If that wasn't enough, in the corner of my eye, I caught sight of two of the crows diving away from the herd surrounding us and shot straight towards where the shadow was, before they slowed and carefully landed on each of the figure "shoulders". The crow too, began to glare at us without a sound, spinning their heads rapidly and extending their necks as far as they could towards to make sure each eye got a good look at us. Just then, they stopped, nothing, frozen, their bodies completely still as their heads fell downwards and I thought I could make them out growing… taller? No, that can't be right, but looking again, my eyes weren't wrong. Those crows were growing, and they were growing fast, but just when I thought it couldn't get any weirder, I saw their beaks began to shrink, and their arms and legs turn pale. Their feathers also began to vanish to reveal… s-skin?!

Oh god, they're not doing what I think they're doing, are they?!

But it just kept going. Soon human legs, feet, arms and hands replaced what was there before, and their heads were how that of young human children, complete with hair and facial expressions of both frustration and disappointment. The one on the left resembled a young girl clutching a plush doll in her right hand, while the one on the left looked like a young boy, and… wait a minute! These two were wearing the same clothing as the two on the roof. Could they be…?

The Neighbor gasping for horror confirmed my suspicions. Those were his children standing on the shoulders of the shadow, and they were clearly upset and angry with him, As I looked into their cold eyes, all I could see was rejection and hate towards the man who I'm sure they believed let them die. I could hear the neighbors trying to speak up behind me, but all that came from him were gasp and whimpers as I'm guessing he was struggling to comprehend what we were looking at in front of us, along with the sounds of squeaking coming from the floor underneath us, which I'm guessing what coming from the Neighbor slowly shifting backwards away, but I wasn't able to see for sure since my body was continuing to refuse my efforts to turn away from the shadow eyes.

Suddenly, I heard the Neighbor bring himself up from the ground and take off down the stairs, the suddenness of the action finally allowing me to pull my gaze away from the shadow to see him running down the steps, but before Yuri or I could follow after him, a loud, deep roar was bellows from the shadow, turning our attention back toward the figure. The eyes of the shadow turned from blue to red, very much like the mannequins we had barely escaped from before, but I could also see the children on its shoulders, from the head down, quickly started fading into black dust, being completely unfazed by this, and as they were fading, the particles of dust began to grow and morph into full grown crows, which flew up to join the swarm circling in the sky surrounding the house. The shadow then brought it arms up and suddenly smashed them into the floor, destroying the floor beneath us and sending us crashing down to the floor below.

We landed hard onto a light blue tiled floor and several large pieces of wood planks scattered around the ground. My ribs felt like they were split in half and my arm and legs might as well be broken with how sore they were and how much it hurt to move them, but I knew as soon as I able to open my eyes and see through the sawdust that plagued the air around us that I didn't have a choice, considering that we were lying right next to the far edge of the tile, which... I don't even want to think about what would happen if we fell. The shadow man, thankfully wasn't looking at where we landed, but rather was looking further down the edge of the house, but I knew exactly what he was looking for, and we had to go after him now. I felt myself straining to bring myself up to my knees, and upon seeing Yuri buried under some of the rubble, I powered through the amount of pain I was in and rushed over to her side.

"Yuri!" I shouted, falling to my knees and shaking her, desperate for a response to show she was still OK. Thankfully, it didn't take long before a heard a groan of pain coming from the lavender haired girl as she forced her eyes open and we worked together to bring ourselves up to our feet.

"Are you alright?" I worried, lightly grasping her shoulders as I stood by her side, glancing into her eyes.

"Yes, thankfully." She responded softly through her labored breathing. She then looked up towards the shadow, who was still frantically hunting for where the Neighbor went. She then turned to face me, and stated bluntly "But we can't waste anymore time."

I nodded in response. "Got it!" I told her with a pinch of newly formed confidence, and the two of us hurried forward towards where the shadow was searching. We headed to the right, through a large square opening in the wall, which said wall was covered by dark blue wallpaper and light gray swirls across it, and entered a long pitch black room, only being illuminated by the windows to our left, the sound of crows and thunder blaring in our ears as we raced down to the end of the room toward some stacks of seemingly random objects, which then the neighbor came running in from the right and in his rush, ended up tripping over himself and slamming onto the ground with a hard thud. We gasped, rushing to him, but before we reached him, we noticed the floor underneath us turning red and a familiar roar coming from behind us. The shadow had found us, and we spun around behind us just in time to see it smashing it's hand through most of the room. We braced ourselves, shielding our faces as the shadow started taking out the walls and the floor in front of us, barely giving us any room to stand as the shadow glanced deeper into the room. We involuntarily stepped back away from the figure as it looked on, completely ignoring us before moving on further down the house. As it left, we were able to loosen our tension and turn back towards where the neighbor was, only to discover that he had vanished, and upon realized that, we looked at each other, silently understanding what we needed to do, and took off after the shadow once again.

Dashing through another opening, we were too focused on reaching the neighbor that we almost slipped and fell into the gap that separated us from a ladder that brought us up to the upper levels. Seeing that the ladder started from the basement directly under us, I carefully brought myself to my knees before spinning around and slowly lowering myself until I was hanging from the floorboards before letting myself drop to the tile below, the only source of light strangely enough being a random medieval torch with a green flame. Yuri nervously watched on as I did this, before repeating what I did to make it down herself. I held my hands up to catch her as she came down. However, I didn't realize that by doing this, I would get a surprisingly solid view of the underside of Yuri's skirt. I tried not to focus on it as I wrapped my hand around her as she dropped into my arms, and landed on the basement floor with me. Letting go, we turned and made our way towards the ladder, which seemed oddly thinner than most ladders normally are, but we climbed up it quickly regardless. Making it up, we frantically started spinning around the empty area to find the neighbor behind us in an empty room in the corner, pressing himself against the wall, breathing rapidly in fear, opposite of another set of windows that a pair of red lights were shining through. We gasped, wasting no time rushing over to him and standing in between him and the shadow, bracing ourselves once more before it smashed his hand through the window again. This time however, something definitely felt different, as when the shadow smashed through the ground, barely missing our feet, what was left of the room seemed much smaller than it was beforehand, but I chose not to question, as I was too focused on the fact the neighbor had vanished again, and the shadow took off in response. We hurried down the empty hall and down the steps in front of where the ladder was, and raced around through the dimly lit hallways, which was much harder to do than normal given the smaller size of the corridors, until we reached another room, this time the near right corner was filled with stack of random household objects, like chairs and boxes, the shadow continuing its searching through another pair of windows to our left. We turned to face him, and it simply looked down, but not at us, rather towards the sounds of the neighbors footsteps coming into the room from the far hallway past the stacks. The shadows eyes turned red again as it readied it's next strike.

"I don't know what you want with him, but you're not going to lay another hand on him, you hear me!" I yelled furiously, facing the giant shadow .

"We won't let you hurt him anymore!" Yuri declared, standing by my side, her expression and stance brimming with determination. The shadow of course, ignored us and once again attempted to smash through the wall, breaking the windows and floors in front of us and sending glass and wood scattering across the room. We shielding our face from the debris, and once we were able to see again, the Neighbor and the shadow had both already taken off. However, looking at the stacks of things in the corner, they were definitely smaller than they were before, but at least from what I could tell, the stuff that was stacked didn't change... , so were they getting smaller, or were we...

I shook my head. Now was not the time to be thinking about this. Turning to Yuri, she also seemed to be noticing the same thing, but after a couple of seconds, she caught me staring at her and stepped back in surprise, clearly caught off guard, but quickly regained her composure, her expression returning to the confidence she had facing the shadow, and we both took off up of stacks to the empty hallway to the left of us. The hallway was pitch black, but as we hurried through, a single dim light illuminated the corridors end, with nothing but wooden walls and another left turn which into another tall, narrow empty room with only more window to our right, and a single empty doorway to our left, which was incredibly tiny for us given our newly larger size, only coming up to our ankles now, but tall enough for the neighbor to peek from, who quickly hid behind the wall upon seeing us.

"Hey, wait!" I called for him, but before I could bend down to reach him, the shadow appeared again, smacking it's hand against the window and focused it gaze at the two of us. Turning to face the windows, I clenched my fists and shot my gaze over to Yuri, who looked over at me, and nodded with an assuring smirk, before we both turned back to face the shadow, who roared louder than after, it's red glowing eyes burning with anger before reeling back and slamming its hands into the windows, but this time, after it crashed through the windows, it stumbled back in shock, it eyes vanishing and dropped it arms to its side, looking strangely... defeated. Without a second thought, Yuri and I leaped out of the house and towards the shadow. Crashing through the large chunks of flooring still falling from the shadows strike, I felt my feet leave the ground as I flew through the air, completely disregarding the seemingly lack of a floor and the army of crows surrounding us, but that didn't matter to us anymore. All that crossed my mind was finally bringing this shadow down, but as we grew closer to him, the world surrounding us suddenly shifted back to white, the crows instantly vanished, their cries suddenly growing silent, and the shadows covered his face like it was blinded before falling back and suddenly disappeared in a flash of golden light. We managed to land on the ground without much trouble, said ground seeming invisible compared to the white void surrounding us. As we circled around us, we saw the neighbor laying on the ground, with a strange floating purple and white swirling orb floating near where the house was before. Gasping as we laid eyes on him, we wasted no time hurrying over to where he was. Yellow flashes of energy pulsated from the orb as we ran towards where the neighbor was laying. It didn't take us very long to reach him, and I quickly fell to my knees, picking up the neighbor and shaking him. He didn't wake up, but Yuri quickly checked for a pulse.

Sighing in relief, she turned to me and explained, "Looks like he just unconscious." Thank god.

We carefully set the neighbor back down, and brought ourselves back up to our feet, turning towards the floating orb that rested near us. We looked towards each other, unsure about what to do about this orb. Without any other options, I slowly reached out towards the orb, but Yuri quickly grabbed my arm before I could reach it. I suddenly felt my arm freeze up from how cold her hand was, my shocked expression greeting her as I brought my gaze around to her.

"Are you sure about this?" Yuri asked me softly, yet concerned.

"What else can we do?" I replied. Yuri's expression slowly fell, and she released her grip on my hand. Although hesitating at first, I found myself reaching for the orb once again. As I grabbed it, I was surprised to find that it was actually very warm. I rotated the orb around, but bizarrely enough, the swirling purple and white details on the orb didn't move regardless of how much I spun it around. Out of confusion, I ended up spinning it around so quickly that it slipped from my hand and smashed onto the ground, a gasp coming from both of us as we watched the orb fall. A large crash sound and a flash of light coming from the broken sphere, and we instinctively shut and covered our eyes to protect ourselves, but just then something strange happened. Even with my eyes being shut, I still saw something, a flash of something filled my sight, or someone. I could make out a human-like figure in a blood red cloak from behind. The figure slowly began to turn around to face me, but before I could see their face, they vanished into another white flash.

That figure... just what was it?


	10. Chapter 7 - Problems with Losing Time

Unknown POV

I could feel a gentle breeze run past my skin, accompanied by the warmth of the air as it flew by. I could hear the crunching of our shoes as they planted themselves in the soft ground under us. Birds were chirping as they took off into the distance, and the leaves of the trees rustled as they were shaken by the wind. But hold on, weren't we still inside? At least, that's what I thought until I finally cracked open my eyes to discover the very same house I woke up in, directly in front of me on the other side of the street. I took a moment to bask in my surroundings. We were no doubt back outside, right in the Neighbor's front yard to be more precise. To my right was Yuri, who seemed just as clueless as I was to find ourselves back here again. It didn't take her very long to notice I was by her side.

"Is… is it over?" She asked me nervously. I thought to myself for a moment before answering.

"Yeah… yeah, I think so. "I replied, unsure about it myself , but she gave a sigh of relief upon hearing my words, so I didn't give it much more thought. We turned back towards the house, only to find not the absurdly oversized unstable mess of a building we had found our way into before but rather a simple, two story building with a light blue wooden exterior, a brown, tiled roof with a hole in the upper left corner and white boards surrounding the windows and fencing in the front of the porch. Could that have something to do with that strange orb we found after taking care of the shadow?

I didn't ponder it for very long, as we heard a grunt of effort come from the ground. Rushing over to the neighbor's side, I extended my hand out for him to grab. He looked at me in confusion for a second, before taking my hand and, with the help of Yuri and I, brought himself back up to his feet, although not without a share of effort. As the neighbor brushed himself off, we took a step back to give him space. I noticed that his clothing seems a bit torn up and he had a few scratches on his face and arms, but besides that, he seems mostly unharmed.

"Thank you, I-" he started, before looking back up at both of us. I noticed that one of his eyebrows was raised in confusion as his gaze rapidly flashed back and forth between me and Yuri before his eyes shot open, like he had just realized something important.

"You two…" he said quietly, his eyes focused on the two of us. "You two were there, but if you're here, then does that mean…it's gone?" Yuri and I glanced at each other for a moment, unsure of what to reply. Hestitanly, he turned back to him and nodded slightly, not completely sure ourselves, but at least we could hopefully reassure him that he was safe.

The Neighbor sighed in relief, his gaze falling towards the grass underneath our feet for a brief moment, before he brought himself back up and without a warning, suddenly kneeling down and wrapped his arms around me, completely catching the both of us off guard.

I… I don't know how to even begin to thank you." He told us softly, but hearing him this close, I could easily make out how gruff his voice was. "I can't even remember when I first saw that shadow, but it feels like… for as long as I can remember, it's always been there, haunting me, never letting me rest, never leaving me alone, forcing me to witness those moments over and over again..." He gripped me tighter as he said this, but I was too shocked from the sudden action that I didn't return the gesture. I could feel his tears drip down onto my shoulder as he spoke.

I saw Yuri place her hand on the Neighbors shoulder closest to her, who let me go of me and turned towards her. "You don't have to worry anymore. It's gone now. It can't hurt you anymore." She sounded as if she regained confidence in her words, and spoke to him without any signs of uncertainty. I was surprised, I thought she was just as unsure about it as I was, but if she thinks it's really gone, then maybe we really did save the neighbor for good after all. Yuri smiled, and the neighbor wiped his eyes as he spoke once again.

"Thank you… for everything." He told us, before turning away to face his house. " I never thought I would ever be rid of it, but somehow… you found a way. Just how did you do it?" Yuri and I looked at each other for a moment, unsure what to say to him.

"Honestly, I don't know." I answered with a hint of uncertainty to my voice. "All I knew was that we wanted to help you, so I guess… there was just a part of me that knew what to do, I really can't describe it any better." The neighbor turned back around to face me, and looked to be unconvinced with my explanation, but quickly shook his head, putting on a small as he did so."

"I suppose it really doesn't matter." He explained. "The only thing that matters to me is that the shadow is gone, and I have you to thank for it." He looked down towards the ground with a depressed expression, crossing his arms as he let out a sigh. He seemed to be deep in thought about something, but I didn't have long to ponder what it could be as Yuri had already taken a step forward towards him, her hands clenched together, pressed against her upper chest.

"You're still thinking about those visions, aren't you?" Yuri asked him softly. "I-I'm sorry there was nothing we could do." Those visions? Was she talking about what we saw while chasing the shadow? The neighbor brought his head up to face her.

"...yes" He answered after a short pause. "There was never a day that goes by where I don't think about them, but that shadow kept showing me everything… everything I wanted to put behind me for good, and everytime, it would keep telling me, over and over again, that what it showed was my fault, that I could have stopped it from happened, and even when I knew I couldn't have, it didn't care, it just wanted to see me suffer."

"You mean?" Yuri realized as she spoke. "Oh my... I'm- I'm so sorry! I had no idea they were…" Yuri's voice trembled as she turned away and tried to hide her guilt behind her hair. I didn't know what to say. Did those things that we saw really happen to him? The neighbor came up to her and placed his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him surprised, but still seeming flustered.

"Don't be." He reassured her with a soft tone. "There was nothing you could have done. It was a long time ago, long before I've ever seen you two here…which reminds me." His tone and expression suddenly dropped as he stepped to face both me and Yuri, crossing his arms. "Just why were you two in my basement anyway?"

I was about to speak, but stopped myself when I realized what my answer might sound like to him. I looked over at Yuri once more, who was just as much of a loss for words as I was. Knowing I didn't have many other options, I sighed and settled on my answer.

"So… I know this may come as a surprise to you…" I started, scratching the back of my head as I explained my reasoning for breaking into his house. "But everything you see here… well, it's not real, any of it. It's all part of a video game made where I came from." I could see his eyebrows rise as he heard this. "Now I know that sounds crazy, and trust me, I get it, but you have to believe me. I don't know how I got here either, I just found myself waking up in that house earlier this morning and I have no idea who it belongs to!" I confessed, pointed to the house across the street " I was just hoping… maybe your basement might hold some answers, considering the whole goal of the game you came from… was breaking into your basement." Yuri fiddled with her fingers nervously as I explained this to him. However, what caught us off guard was his reaction, or a lack thereof. Surprisingly, the neighbor didn't seem to react much to this revelation. Yuri stepped over towards me.

"A-are you sure you want to tell him this?" She asked me quietly, being careful not to let him hear.

"What else can I say?" I asked her out loud. "I couldn't make up something like that if I tried, so I figure it's just better to tell him the truth."

"Is this true?" The neighbor asked, his eyes moved towards Yuri, who quickly understood the question was for her. She hesitated for a moment before taking a deep breath and matching the neighbor gaze.

"Y-yes." She replied nervously. "About everything." The neighbors hand rose up to rest on his chin as his expression dropped towards the ground. I assumed he was pondering what he had just heard. I was just shocked that he was taking this revelation way better than I had expected, considering when Monika found out the truth about what her world was, she nearly killed everyone else and tore the game in half just to be with me. After a moment of silence, the neighbor spoke once more.

"I see." He said bluntly. "Now that I think about it, knowing that makes everything make much more sense."

"Wait, really?" I blurted out without thinking.

"Of course. If what you say really is the truth after all, then this answers far more than even might realize at first. Why I couldn't remember when the shadow first appeared, why I know someone else lives in the house you said you came, even if I can't recall them very well." He spun around back towards the house again as he continued. "How my house suddenly went from that absurd mess it was before back to what was before, and to be honest, it even answers my concerns from the fact that I can't seem to remember much of anything besides today, besides those moments in the visions, which I even recall being present for to begin with, and… something else… something… much worse." He slowly brought himself back around towards us again. "I suppose if what you say is true, that you came from the "_real world", _that might have something to do with your rather strange appearance." My eyes shot open, and I found myself quickly looking down at my hands again. I was so preoccupied with the shadow and the neighbor's basement I had completely forgotten about what happened to my body when I first got here." I looked back up towards him, trying to disregard those thoughts for the time being.

"Yea, maybe. But are you sure you're okay about knowing all this? I mean, about you only being a video game character and all." I asked him.

"Well, I can't say I'm thrilled to learn that, but I suppose it's better than pretending that it's not the case." He answered. "But that doesn't matter right now. What's important is getting you back to your world, and if you were brave enough to bring down that shadow, then I have faith that you'll find your way out of here." I could feel my eyes widen as he said this.

"You really think so?"

"I'm sure of it, and if you two need anything, just remember I'm alway here to help you out. It's only fair after what you've done for me." I felt a cheesy grin grow on my face as he told me this.

"Thank you, Mr… um."

... and just like that, my smile was shot. The neighbor however, quickly took notice of my dilemma.

"Peterson." He responded. "But please, call me Theodore." His eyes flashed between Me and Yuri. "I don't believe I've gotten either of your names." Yuri's eyes widened in surprise.

"Oh, of course." She said to him, holding her hand out for a shake. "My name is Yuri. It's a pleasure to meet you, Theodore."

"Yuri huh?" Theodore said, accepting Yuri's handshake. "Can't say I've heard a name like before." He then turned towards me. "And you are?"

"Oh right." I said quickly, nodding my head while extending my own hand. "My names-" Then, just like that, my mind went completely blank. No words, no pictures, no names, nothing. It felt just as empty as the void we escaped from not five minutes ago. I was completely caught off guard by this, and I noticed both Yuri and the neighbor expressions were just confused as I was about this. I tried several times to recall my name, but every time I got to that point in my thought process, my mind just snapped to being empty again, save for a single word.

"Protag"

"Hmm?" I could hear the neighbor say.

"Protag, I guess that's my name, or at least it's the only one I can think." The neighbor didn't seem too weirded out by this however. I guess with how much we've gone through today, he could let this detail slide.

"Well then, Protag." The neighbor said, returning my handshake as well. "I wish you luck on your way. After what you've told me, you're going to need every little ounce of luck you get." He let go of my hands and placed his hands on his hips. "Tell you what, since I'm already headed back inside, I'll go take a look around my basement again. See if I can't find anything unusual that might help you out."

"Oh, sure. That's very generous of you." Yuri said to him. "Would you want us to come and help with your search?"

"NO!" He yelled without warning, causing both of us to jump back in surprise. Yuri and I glanced at each other with confused and worried looks for a brief second before turning back towards the neighbor, whose expression told me that he just realized what he had said.

"I mean, no" He repeated himself, much calmer this time. "I can handle it myself. I'll let you know if I find something." He seemed really serious about this, so I chose not to question his choice.

"Alright then. Well, I hope everything goes well for you." I told him.

"Same to you." The Neighbor said to me. "I hope you find what you're looking for, and thank you again for helping me." He turned back toward his house one final time, and made his way towards the building, but before he stepped inside, he spun his gaze back towards us.

"And Yuri!" He shouted from his porch. Yuri perked up as she heard this. Theodore brought his free hand around to tap the back of his head. "Make sure you keep that arm swing strong, you're gonna need it." He turned back to the house and stepped inside.

Yuri didn't say anything for a second, but by time she realized what he meant, he had already shut the door behind him. She seemed very embarrassed about what he said, but before I could question what it was about, I thought I heard something down the road. It sounded like someone was calling for Yuri. I turned towards the voices, and straight away I knew exactly who it was, or more accurately, who they were.

As I turned around to face the voices, I felt my foot hit something hard. I kneeled down and picked up what I collided with. As I brought myself back up, I looked on with curiosity and confusion at what I was holding. It was a large hourglass, roughly the size of my hand. It had a polished wooden finish to the top and bottom of the glass along with what looked to be spirals carved into the disks that were connected to the legs that connected the ends, with a tiny purple top hat with a yellow stripe wrapped around it in the middle of each of them. Strangely enough, it was surprisingly light, given that there didn't seem to be any sand inside the glass. I didn't have very long to question this, as we were soon greeted by a very annoyed and angry pink haired tsundere.

"Where the hell have you been!" Natsuki yelled, bringing herself directly into Yuri's face, causing her to step back slightly. "You've been gone for hours!" Yuri didn't get a chance to answer however, as she quickly found herself wrapped in the squeezing arms of an overjoyed Sayori.

"Yuri!" She screamed in delight. "I'm so happy you're okay! We've been looking everywhere for you!"

"You… you have?" She questioned, struggling to escape Sayori's iron grip. "I'm- I'm sorry. I didn't realize how long we were gone."

"We?" Sayori stated, then she let go of her when she noticed me standing off to the side. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry." She apologized, pushing her index fingers together. "I didn't see you there."

"Oh great, it's you." Natsuki revolted, crossing her arms as she gave me a displeasing look. "What are you doing with Yuri?"

"It's a long story." Yuri said to her.

Natsuki groaned aloud, rolling her eyes back to Yuri. "I can't believe you would just run off like that. It's not like I was worried about you or anything."

"Well, what matters is that she's okay!" Sayori stated. However, that's when Monika caught up to the other, and before she could speak up, she saw me.

"Player." She said, her tone turned cold. The others grew silent as they turned towards us.

"Monika." I replied. As she started walking towards me, a million thoughts started violently slamming themselves into the sides of my head. After our last confrontation, I had no idea what to say to her. Between what we discovered in the house to this situation me and Yuri have gotten ourselves into, I was admittedly terrified of what she was going to say to me, but I knew I had to say something.

"L-look, I'm sorry." I started. "I don't know what came over me earlier. I know what I said was wrong, and I just-" I was suddenly cut off by Monika placing her finger on my lips.

"Don't. Please." Monika told me bluntly. "Listen. I know what happened wasn't your fault. I know you're scared about what's happening. Trust me, I understand completely, and I also understand why you would think it was me. I just can't bring myself to hate you for it. So please, don't start this. I already forgive you for it. All I ask is that you let us help you." She slowly pulls her hand away from my lips, and gives me a warm smile. I'm at a loss for words. Even after everything she saw and I said, was she really okay letting it go so quickly.

"Monika, I…" I turned my gaze towards the others, who all bore similar expressions of confusion. "Are you really sure about this?"

"I wouldn't want it any other way." She said to me. Sayori took a step forward towards us.

"Yea!" She added. "So what if we said a few things we aren't happy with? As long as we're sorry about it and are willing to forgive each other, that's what's important, right?"

"Of course. We're all in this together. We should at least make the best of it." Yuri told us.

"I still think you're a complete asshole!" Natsuki stated. "But I guess I can deal with you for a while if everyone else is fine with you." I looked around at everyone, completely taken aback by their determination. They all showed their expressions of fortitude in their own unique ways, and everyone seemed equally satisfied with their choice, even if they didn't completely trust me yet.

I sighed. "Alright" I said softly. "I guess I do need your help."

"Yay!" Sayori yelled joyfully, growing a big goofy grin on her face as she jumped and clapped with excitement. Monika and Yuri gave each other looks of content, while Natsuki simply smiled to herself. However, Monika's expression quickly faded as she realised something.

"So, what exactly were you doing with the player anyway?" Monika asked, a hint of cynicism in her words.

"Oh, right." Yuri's eyes widened as she clasped her hands together behind her back. "Like I said before, it's quite a long story." She turned to face the rest of us. "Perhaps we should find a more comfortable place to discuss. It seems rude to keep conversing in someone else's property." But before anyone could say anything else, I heard a loud thud come from where Sayori was as something smacked her in the back of the head.

"OW!" She yelped as she rubbed the back of her head.

"Sayori!" Monika gasped, as we rushed to her side. "Are you alright?"

"Yea." Sayori groaned "I think so." We turned around to see what hit her, only to discover a closed light blue umbrella with a star pattern wrapped around it. Sayori picked it up and spun it around in her hand, then looked up to see a very peculiar sight.

"Look!" Sayori called, pointing to the sky. The others looked up and gasped in surprise from what they saw, which were dozens of the same hourglasses like the very one I was holding raining from the sky, falling from what looked like some sort of spaceship hovering above the planet. As we stared, completely perplexed by what we saw, Natsuki spoke up.

"Wait, that one looks different." Natsuki pointed out, her finger shot out toward the shower of hourglass

I had to squint in order to make it out, but the closer the object came towards us, the more I realized what Natsuki saw wasn't just some random object, but it almost looked like… a person. Before I could really fathom what I was looking at, we witnessed the figure crash land into a tree a good distance down the street. The other winced as the figure landed, and we all looked at each other for a short moment. Without any words being spoken, we all hurried down the road towards the crash site.

As we grew closer to where the figure landed, I discovered that what we saw wasn't just a person, but in fact, it looked like a little girl, dressed in a purple shirt that was too big for her, light gray pants and brown boots, along with a yellow cape and a giant zipper. Her hair was surprisingly similar to Monika's, only rather than a white bow, she had a large purple top hat with a yellow stripe, exactly like the one on the hourglass. The girl had somehow gotten her cape caught on the branch of the tree, and was struggling to free herself, but besides that, she thankfully seemed relatively unharmed, rather, she looked more annoyed than anything else. She stopped us as she saw us and she tried to run towards us with outstretched arms, only to not go anywhere because, well, she was still on the branch.

"Are you okay?" Yuri called out to her worriedly. The girl simply nodded, but tugged at her cape to show her predicament. Yuri looked towards us, seemingly hoping for any ideas.

"Oh, here. Use this!" Sayori said to Yuri, who held out the umbrella for her to use.

"Oh, thank you." Yuri told her. She took the umbrella from Sayori and turned around back toward the tree. Stretching the end of the umbrella out toward the girl, she carefully grabbed the part of the cape hooked onto the tree and gently slid the girl off the branch, who landed in Monika outstretched arms. Monika then set the child down on the sidewalk, who brushed the sawdust off her shirt and readjusted her cape and hat. After doing so, she looked up to see all of us staring down at her. Even with her top hat, which was basically the side of her head, she only stood up just slightly higher than my waist, so it was strange gazing at a person, child or not, that only was half as tall as we were.

As the girl studied us, her gaze flashing between me and the club members, Monika dropped to her knees to match the girls height.

"Are you sure you're okay?" She asked her softly. The girl thought to herself for a moment, then simply responded with a shrug. Before Monika could say anything else, Natsuki stepped forward, her hands on her hips.

"So, if you don't mind me asking, why exactly were you falling from the sky?" She questioned. The girl acted surprised by her comment, then jumped in realization, turned and pointed up towards where the spaceship was.

"Wait, is that your spaceship?" Sayori asked. The girl responded with a joyful nod, then reenacted her fall using her hand, adding in her own sound effects, which admittedly, was actually really cute. However, when she finished, she gasped as she saw something. Without any warning, she quickly ran past Monika, who stood up and nearly backwards moving out of her way, and swiped the hourglass and umbrella from me and Yuri hands, catching everyone by surprise. She attached the umbrella to her back, which _somehow_ managed to stay on without any kind of the support, and quickly spun the hourglass around in her hands. After a short moment, she sighed in relief and believe it or not, the hourglass shrunk down to basically nothing as she placed it into her pants pocket.

"Oh, I get it." Sayori realized. "Those hourglasses that fell from the sky must be hers." Hat Kid nodded rapidly in excitement, seemingly confirming Sayori's comment. Sayori kneeled down and said to her, "Don't worry, we'll help you find them."

"We will?" Natsuki, Yuri and Monika exclaimed. I was caught off guard by her sudden statement, but something in me knew this would happen, I just couldn't seem to recall what it was. Maybe it was my memory messing with me again, I have to figure this out eventually. The girl bounced up and down with joy and leaped into Sayori open arms with a big grin on her face, who wrapped her arms around her and brought herself up to her feet, carrying the girl like a mother holding their child.

"Of course." Sayori said, like it was the most obvious thing ever. "She lost all of her belongings. It only makes sense that we help her get them back."

"I mean, yea I guess." Natsuki stated uncertainty, crossing her arms.

"I suppose we could help her out." Yuri added, walking over to where they were. "Since we will no doubt be travelling around the town while we search for clues about how to get Protag home, we could see if we could find her hourglass along the way."

"Hang on, Protag?" Monika questioned.

"Oh yea. That's my name." I pointed out. "Or at least that was the only one I could think of."

"I see." She said in an almost disappointed tone. However, her voice immediately regained its usual spirit as she spoke to the group. "Alright, then it settled. We'll go help find her hourglasses on our way to get Protag home!" She ended with a confident smile.

"Yay!" Sayori responded with her usual excitement, then she gasped as she realized something. "Oh yeah!" She turned towards the girl in her arms. "I completely forgot to ask your name." The girl perked up in curiosity, then thought to herself for a moment before pointing to her hat. Sayori looked confused at her response.

"Hat… Kid?" She asked her. The girl nodded again in response. Sayori didn't seem to mind this however.

"Alright then, Hat Kid it is!" She stated with pride.

"Okay everyone!" Monika announced, gathering everyone's attention. "We now know what we are going to do! Now all we need is a place to start looking." She looked towards me. "Any idea of where we should go?" I was taken aback by Monika's comment, seeing as my own memory issue was still in my mind, but I tried to push it aside as I focused on choosing our destination. After some thought, as much as I hated the thought of going here, I knew given its importance, we would have to go there at some point. Best to get it out of way now.

"Well…" I started. "There is one place I saw…"

Special shoutouts go to Ceaser Madrazo. His DDLC Meta series was one of the best interpretations of DDLC post game fanon I have ever seen, and his style of writing helped to inspire many parts of this chapter, mainly the conversation between Protag, Yuri and Theodore.

Thanks again for reading! And remember…

He will come back…

He always does...


	11. Chapter 8 - Fun Times at Freddys

Protag's POV

This accursed place…

Ever since those first moments I've found myself in this town, I've never thought I would find myself here, standing in front of what otherwise looked like a completely harmless restaurant meant to entertain children. To be honest, I think that's really all is what meant to be, but I knew better. I knew what this place really was, and the four cartoon animal characters sitting on top of the sign above the doors to lead inside did little to persuade me against what I remembered from the games this restaurant came from. However, even with all this said, I still found myself unable to keep walking, as if something I couldn't see was physically holding me back from entering. I guess I was still nervous about going in, given my knowledge of the characters, but something was still holding me back. Although I tried my hardest to remain confident for the others, I could still feel my hand and knees shaking as I stared on towards the establishment, the determined expression I put on slowly breaking into one of fear. My attention was so focused on the restaurant that I shot up unexpectedly for a second when I felt a warm, comforting hand place itself on my shoulders, the hand was in itself connected to Monika's beautiful figure.

"Are you alright?" Monika asked me softly. I turned to her to find a worried expression on her face. I guess I never did explain to them why we came here of all places, but would they believe me if I told them. Part of me was sure they would, but the rest of me… the very idea of it seemed too absurd. I mean, I know they would understand that it's part of a video game, considering they just escaped one, but expecting them to take my word that these were kid-friendly killer animatronic characters just seemed too far fetched of an idea, and if something were to happen… I couldn't stand thinking about it.

"Yea, I think so." I responded. "It's just…" I turned my gaze back towards the restaurant. "There's something about this place that makes me feel… uneasy. I can't describe it all that well, but I feel like… something's going to go terribly wrong, and I don't know what it is."

"Really, this place scares you?" Natsuki questioned sarcastically. "If this is so bad for you, I would love to see you in an amusement park." I immediately turned around to her, who was wearing a smug smirk on her face. But before I could say anything, Yuri suddenly chimed in.

"P-perhaps we should go inside? I don't think we're really accomplishing anything by standing out here."

Sayori quickly piped up upon hearing this, and rushed ahead in the front of everyone before turning back around to face the group. "Come on everyone! Let's go!" She waved towards the entrance and ran off, looking as excited as ever. I truly do admire her optimism sometimes. If only she knew…

I looked around and saw Yuri and Natsuki looking at each other with confused looks, before walking ahead to meet up with Sayori. Hat Kid also seemed very confused, but her focus was up toward the restaurant's logo. Her head was tilting back and forth, as if she was trying to figure out what she was looking at, but then perked up as if she just realized something, her hat almost leaping off her head, and ran towards the others as her hat landed returned to where it was. I guessed she realized that the others already went ahead. I then saw Monika step up to my side

"No matter what happens, we'll be right next to you. "You don't have anything to worry about." She told me with her trademark smile and confident look.

I simply sighed. "I wish it was that simple." I stated bluntly before walking past her. I know that probably wasn't the right thing to say, but I still wasn't sure if they would believe if I told her what was really on my mind. Nevertheless, we made our way towards the front doors where the others were waiting.

Even before we opened the glass doors to step inside, we could already hear the muffled noises from inside, and as we headed inside, those noises became all the more apparent. Just from the first few seconds of being inside of the pizzeria, I could tell it is about as loud and chaotic as you would expect from a children's restaurant, although this one was filled with dozens of different Indie game characters. Kids were screaming and running around, employees were rushing around with plates of foods and drinks and music was blaring from the speakers, overpowering anything the characters were saying. The smell for fresh pizza filled the air, only to be immediately killed off by the stench of the robots, who were performing to our right. Thankfully, they were still on their stage, and only their upper halves were moving. Good, they're not in free roam, that's gonna make things much easier to deal with, but it still seemed pretty sad to look at in person. In fact, the restaurant itself was surprisingly depressing looking. The walls were dark grey and a single thin section of white and black tiles running across it, the ends of the tiles covered with red tape. The occasional drawing, obviously done by younger children, were also hanging on the walls, but looked so out of place given the walls half finished look. The floor was also tiled, only with red and blue tiles instead. Some paper stars were hanging from the ceiling, and the tables were covered with a white sheet with tiny colored polka dots on in random patterns. The chairs were black with a 'V' shape on the top and each featured a large star on the front of them, and there were dozens of plates, party hats, random pieces of crinkled up paper and chunks of half eaten pizza that littered the ground. Other than that however, the place was shockingly barren, almost unfinished in its appearance, but that wasn't important to me. What mattered is if this place had anything I could to help me get home. We each took a seat at the only empty table, the one closest to the purple, starred curtains sitting in the back corner.

Menus were already on the table as we sat down, it's cover decorated with 2D drawings of the characters and, out of curiosity, I decided to take a look, just to see what they had. Everything on there was about what you would have expected from a restaurant like this. Different variations of pizza filled in the corners of the colorful menu, along with sides of chicken wings, breadsticks, fries and soda. Some of the meals to choose from even had clever little names to them, like 'Freddy's Fredsticks' or Chica's Chicken Basket'. On the bottom of the last page showcased how someone could organize their own birthday party at the restaurant. That definitely didn't bring back bad memories or anything, why would you ask?

We weren't looking at the menus very long before I caught something in the corner of my eye, catching my attention. Someone wasn't walking, but rather twirling their way over towards us, before stopping right next to our table. "Hey there!" The new voice said to us, turning our attention towards the direction it came from. "Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. What can I get you all today?" The person in question had the voice of a younger woman, but didn't look to be human. She instead had the appearance of a cartoon character, although she seemed as tall as we were. She had a larger head and big, black eyes with her eyelashes coming from the bottom corners of her eyes sticking outwards from each other, bright pink skin with three large bumps on the top of her head rather than having hair, along with crab pincers for hands. She also had on a light blue and white dress with a yellow belt, light blue shoes and a black apron, the logo of Freddys slapped on the top middle of the apron, just below where her neck was. Slightly off to the right was her name tag. It looked worn, but I could still make the name, Carrie. Must be another one of the indie game characters who ended up here.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Sayori exclaimed, raising her hand in the air like she wanted to get called on by her teacher. "I'll take the pepperoni, and the ham, and the chicken, and the sausage, and the bacon, and the-"

"Alright, alright." Carrie said to her, putting her hands up slightly. "I like the enthusiasm, but how about I just get you a meat lovers instead, Just to make things easier for you? Sounds good?"

"Oh, but I wanted one of each and-" Sayori started again.

"She wants Meat Lovers." I cut her off.

"Meanie." Sayori told me, crossing her arms and pouting slightly. I did end up giggling a little to myself. She really hasn't changed has she? Although, I wonder if that means...

"Alright then." Carrie declared after jotting down the order. "How about for the rest of you?" She turned to us with a curious expression, readying herself to start writing again.

"Do you have a vegetarian option?" Monika asked.

"That we do! We'll make it special for you!" Carrie responded, a powerful smile appearing on her face.

"Thank you!" Answered a glad Monika. Carrie wasted no time getting that down on her notepad.

"Extra cheese and Jalapenos for mine!" Natsuki declared, waving her hand for Carrie to see. I guess the possibility of food caught her attention. "Fill it up all the way!"

"Are you sure you can handle it?" Carrie asked her, with a clear mix of genuine and sarcastic worry.

"Pshh, I can handle anything!" Natsuki declared. "What's the worst a baby place like this can do anyway?"

"Suit yourself." Carrie told her.

"I'll just take a standard Pepperoni and Sausage. Nothing fancy." I said to her.

"Nothing wrong with wanting something simple." Carrie replied as we wrote more notes down, then looked over at Yuri, who simply stared at her for a good second before jumping up as if she was just startled by something. "O-oh I'm sorry." She muttered. "I-I didn't know you were waiting for me."

"No sweat. Take as long as you need." Carrie reassured her. "Despite what it looks like, we're not actually that busy at the moment. Most people came in just to see Freddy and his friends. In fact, there have been a lot of different customers today, a lot of whom I've never seen before. I guess this place just invites a lot of different people together? Either way, it's still wonderful to see so many happy faces, even with all this weird stuff going on.

"You've seen it too?" I asked out loud, only realizing after how dumb that question sounded.

"Absolutely!" She stated without any hesitation. "I can't even remember how I ended up here. I just remember waking up yesterday and… here I was. I couldn't help how lost and confused everyone looked, so I thought I'd help out the best I could while everyone tried to figure out what was happening, afterwards I found myself here. I wanted to have someplace safe people could go to be happy while they were adjusted to this new town, and I thought this would be the perfect place for that!"

"That's very considerate of you. We're glad to have you here, Carrie." Monika said to her.

"Thank you! I try to do what I can!" Carrie replied with a hint of glee, before her composure suddenly broke as she realized her situation. "Oh gosh, I still need to finish your orders, I'm sorry!"

"It's no problem at all." Yuri assured, before opening up her menu again and picking out the first option she saw. "I suppose I'll just have the Fazspecial then." She told her. That special being a combination of pepperoni, sausage, onions, mushrooms, olives and peppers.

"Sure thing!" She then turned to Hat Kid "And how about for you?"

I turned my gaze to Hat Kid, who had to stand in order to reach the table. Her menu (which was almost half her size) was propped up to make it easier for her to read, and strangely, she was constantly tilting her head and her menu back and forth and around in circles with a curious look on her face, as if she never seen one of these before in her life.

"What's wrong?" Sayori asked her "Can't decide what you want?" Hat Kid turned to her, her face now bearing a confused look at Sayori's question. I'm guessing that meant a yes. Given the way she was awestruck, yet confused by the menu, I could reasonably make the assumption that she hadn't seen something like that before. With this in mind, I spoke up to Sayori.

"I think she needs your help ordering." I said to her.

"Oh, sure thing." She responded to me before turning back to Hat Kid. "What did you want to get?" She asked her gently. Hat Kid realized what she meant, and quickly looked through the menu again, before turning the menu to face Sayori and pointing at one of the pictures on the side that caught her attention, a puzzled look on her face. Strangely enough, while the others pictures looked like realistic snapshots, the one she was pointing at was instead a 2D drawing of the food. Odd, it looked they just grabbed the picture off the internet or something.

"Okay!" Sayori said, taking that as a sign Hat Kid made up her mind. "She'll have the Pepperoni and Mushroom mix meal!"

"Sounds like a plan!" Carrie declared. "I'll have your order ready in no time!" She zipped off towards the kitchen at blistering speed, completely catching me by surprise. I didn't know she could run that quickly. But I didn't long to think about that, as I discovered Natsuki was calling my name, snapping her fingers in my face to get my attention.

"Okay so remind me, what are we doing here again?" She asked me, slightly disgruntled.

"Oh right, I should probably explain what we're doing here." I informed them, trying to speak loud enough so they could all hear, but keeping myself down so we wouldn't attract any unwanted attention. "So, you know how everyone here came from some kind of indie game, right?"

"Everyone?" Sayori pondered out loud.

"At least as far as I could tell, yea." I replied. The others seemed surprised by this. It makes sense though. They wouldn't have known they were from any games. "But regardless of that, I could only find a few of the places those games took place in. My house, Mr. Peterson's house, and here, along with a couple others. So my thought process is, if all of these characters are here, but only a few of the places, then the places that are here have to mean something right?"

"I mean, maybe? I don't know." Natsuki said, clearly unsure of my words.

"That's why we're here. Since this place came from an Indie game, and it's only one of a couples of places that are here, to me, that should mean that something must be here that can give me some idea about how to get home." The club members thought about this for a moment, while Hat Kid was preoccupied looking around the room, spinning around in her chair while keeping her hand on her hat, as if she was looking for something. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised if it turns out a Time Piece found its way in here, since they always seem to end up in the worst of places.

"Alright then." Monika announced. "So now that we know why we're here, what exactly should we be looking for?"

"I only wish I knew." I told her. "All I can assume is that whatever we need has to be here." I heard Sayori give a concerned "huh?" as she noticed Hat Kid's frantic search.

"What's going on? Did you see something?" She asked her. Hat Kid then turned to her and pointed to her hat, before using her fingers to trace an hourglass shape in the air.

"Oh, I get it." Sayori's eyes widened as she realized Hat Kid's dilemma. "I think one of her hourglasses is here."

"Really? That's great!" Monika said. "At this rate, we'll find them all in no time!"

"Don't worry. We'll get it back for you soon." Yuri told her. "But perhaps we should hold off searching for it until the restaurant starts to clear out. It might be difficult looking for it with this many characters here." I looked around and despite the building's less than stellar appearance, the place was still packed, and I could tell Yuri was extremely uncomfortable being around so many people, so I understood where she was coming from.

"Sure, that makes sense." I said to Yuri. I gave her a comforting smile, and she seemed a little less tense than she just was before.

"You mean we have to stay here longer?! I can already feel my ears bleeding!" Natsuki complained, covering the side of her head with her hands in anguish.

Just at the moment, Carrie came back to our table, carrying a large filled with freshly baked pizza.

"On second thought." Natsuki stated, the food immediately catching her attention

"Told ya I wouldn't keep you waiting." She said to us as she started passing everyone their respective plates.

"Thanks again, Carrie." Monika said to her as she covered the cost for the food.

"No problem." She assured her. "Don't be afraid to come by sometime and say hello. I'll always be here when I can. Enjoy everyone!" She turned around and headed back towards the other tables, serving them the same way she did for us.

I took a look down at the dish in front of me. The pizza was a little less than the size of a standard dinner plate, roughly enough to feed a single person, but cut into four pieces and, believe it or not, looked exactly like the picture was advertising! I was honestly flabbergasted, I had no idea it would turn out like this! It actually looked really good, although I still was a little nervous to actually try it. Sayori and Natsuki however, wasted no time thinking about this and started wolfing down their food the second it landed in front of them. Yuri wiped her hands down with sanitizer, passing it to me and Monika as well before using a knife and fork to eat her meal piece by piece. We all ate in silence for a bit, savoring the food, and I got to say, it wasn't actually wasn't that bad. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was still a legitimately solid pizza, I was impressed. I know it's my history with this place making me pessimistic about everything, but I tried not to let that bother me at the moment. Instead, I turned my attention back to the group and found Hat Kid again, doing the same curious dance she did with the menu, only now with one of her slices, flipping and spinning in her hands as if it was some weird gooey, slimy alien creature. I mean, given that fact she technically was an alien, wouldn't that mean-... you know what, I'm just gonna stop this train of thought before it gets out of hand.

Part of the cheese on her slice fell off and slapped onto the table, making her jump in surprise. This caught Sayori's attention, and she turned towards her, swallowing what she had in the mouth.

"It's just pizza, silly." She told her playfully. "You eat it, see?" and, as if to demonstrate, shoved the last of her slice into her mouth. Hat Kid, still bearing a confused glance, slowly took a tiny bite of her slice. Her eyes shot open the second it entered her mouth, and she immediately began chowing it down just as fast as Sayori and Natsuki were earlier, who at this point, had already finished their plates.

As Monika swallowed another bite of her slice, she turned to speak to me.

"So why exactly were you two standing in your Neighbor's yard anyway?" She asked suddenly. Me and Yuri turned towards each other, unsure about what to say. Yuri then set her utensils down and began to speak.

"Theodore, his neighbor, was struggling to move past the tragic passing of his Wife and Daughter…" She started, the others gasped as she said this.

"Oh gosh, I had no idea!" Monika said. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. There was nothing we could have done." I added. "But that wasn't the only problem. There was this shadowy figure that kept looming over him, constantly repeating the moments those tragedies happened to him over and over, never letting him move on with his life, always keeping him locked in this state of guilt."

"What kind of sick person would do something like that?!" Natsuki demanded.

"But why?" Sayori asked. "Why would it do that to him?"

"I don't know." Yuri answered. "And I don't think we ever will… but it's gone now. We somehow managed to save him from it, and I believe he should be able to finally rest. Part of me wonders what that Shadow really was to begin with, considering it not only trapped him in those memories, but also transformed his house into the unstable contraption we saw before and somehow got its hands on one of Hat Kid's hourglasses." Hat Kid's eyes widened as she heard this, but Yuri quickly attempted to save herself "B-b-but don't worry, I think that was the one we already have." This seemed to calm her down a bit, and she resumed her feeding frenzy.

"Well, the important thing is now he's safe." Monika declared. "What matters now is looking for a way to get Protag back home."

"Right." I responded. "He says he's looking around in his basement for anything that might help, so we'll just have to wait and see if something comes up." Everyone pondered to themselves for a moment.

"So what do we do now?" Sayori asked curiously, leaning back in her chair. Before anyone could respond to her question, a loud hum came over the speakers of the restaurant as the music quickly faded away, and the conversations of the people fell silent.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls." The robotic voice of the handunit blared over the speakers. "Please turn your attention to the curtains of Pirate Cove and give a warm welcome to our favorite Pirate Captain, Foxy!" The crowd of characters, mostly the younger kids, cheered and jumped with excitement as they rushed over to plant themselves near the curtain, awaiting the animatronic fox to make his appearance.

"Foxy? Who's that?" Sayori questioned out loud.

"I guess we're about to find out." Natsuki replied. We just happened to be sitting at the table nearest to the corner, so we didn't have to move in order to get a good view of the stage. However, my attention was taken by something else. What looked to be the manager of the building came out of the door in the corner across from the cove, in between the bathrooms and the kitchen, dressed in a red shirt, light blue jeans and a black apron. He seemed like a middle aged man, and stepped out of what looked like his office, closing the door behind him. While the others were busy awaiting the pirate fox to appear, I stood up from my seat, and made my way over to where he was standing, hoping to get any sort of information from him.

Natsuki's POV

_Alright, I just need to take a moment to process everything that's been going on the last day and a half. We wake up in this random town none of us have ever been to before, with a whole bunch of random people we've never seen before. Nobody knows what's going on, and then this person show up out of nowhere and acts like they know all of us, even though we have no clue who they are, and starts accusing Monika of doing all this for no reason, then the moment we walk in on him, suddenly they act all guilty and sorry, and then Monika, who was trying to make us ignore everything at first, just forgives him like that, like it wasn't that big of a deal, like she knows the guy would do that! What is going on between those two? And then after that, Monika tells us that we're not only video game characters and our entire lives were fake, but she murdered all of us to be with them, then brought us all back and expects us to just accept that she's sorry just like that! Then Yuri up and disappears along with them for the whole night into this random person's house for no reason, and helps this guy out with his problems, as if they knew the man was dealing with them before they even met him, and now we're in a restaurant made for babies with a kid who fell from the sky and they don't even know what they're doing here?! I know this guy came from the "real world" or whatever, if what Monika says is true, but I get the feeling they're not telling us everything. It's almost like they know everything that's going to happen, but won't say for some reason. What is going on with them? What makes this dump so special anyway? Why were they so nervous about going in? None of this adds up and it's driving me nuts! If they know what's going to happen, why won't they tell us?! Do they have some sick plan or something?! And Monika too! What does she see in them?! She seems so crazy about them that not only is she willing to go with whatever they say, on top of forgiving them on the spot for blaming her for bringing them here to begin with, but she also, may I remind you, LITERALLY killed all of us just to be with them! Whatever is it, I'm going to get to the bottom of it! When they get back, I'm going to give the both of them a piece of my mind!_

I probably would have kept going with my mental rant, but the lights surrounding the stage began to flash and spin around, snapping my attention back to the moment. Stock pirate music starting blaring from the speakers as the curtains pulled back, revealing a large red robot fox standing at the edge of the stage. It looked about as old as the others did, but was weird about it was just how unfinished it looked. It's head seemed mostly intact, even having an eyepatch covering it's right eye, guessing to match with the pirate theme it had, but it's body and arms had a bunch of rips and tears in it, and it's hands, feet and most of its legs were completely exposed, like they didn't have enough time to finish covering the rest of its metal insides up. At least it's right hand was a hook to match his missing eye, and the part of his leg was covered in what I guess was to resemble brown pants, but even it looked just as torn as the rest of it. Was this thing even supposed to be used? I seriously doubted it. It looked like they just pulled it out of a dumpster or something. The kids didn't seem to care though, since they were screaming and yelling just as much as they were before.

"Ahoy there, me hearties. I'd be welcoming ya to Pirate Cove!" The fox started talking in the most stereotypical male pirate voice I have ever heard, but I guess I shouldn't have expected anything less. "Me name be Captain Foxy, and for the next fifteen sailor minutes, I be taking yar into a world of adventure, danger, mystery and excitement unlike anything ya ever seen before! Strap yourself in, Landlubbers, as I be telling ya only the greatest tales the seven seas has to offer!" At the very least, he seemed to move and speak just fine. I have to admit though, I am a little curious on what kind of story he would be telling us. Wasn't sure why, since I figured it would probably be something dumbed down for the kids, but I don't know, something in me couldn't help but be interested anyway.

"Heya Foxy! Long time no see!" A higher-pitched, cartoon~esque robot voice came from the main stage. Judging by who was moving, I assumed it was meant to be the purple rabbit speaking.

"It's been a while since we've seen you! How's it been? Not getting into any trouble I hope!" A more girlish voice this time. Guessing that one was the yellow chicken talking, or… was it a duck? I honestly couldn't tell.

"I hope everyone here is excited for Foxy's story! I can't wait to hear what he has to share with us all today!" A third voice, this one deeper in pitch, and almost sounded more bored than anything else. Was that supposed to be Freddy's voice?

"Aye, Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, me friends! It be good seeing you all again!" Foxy declared. "The water's been rough as of late, but a little wave's not gonna be enough to scare this captain! Why, I've sailed through more storms in my time than you've eaten slices of pizza, I being sure of that!"

"Are you sure?" The rabbit asked "Cause I've have eaten a lot of pizza."

"Absolutely!" Foxy said. "Would I ever lie to ya?"

"Even that time you said you scaled an entire mountain with just your ship?" The bear replied.

"Hey, that one doesn't count!" Foxy snapped back, which got a laugh from the audience.

"Or the time you told us you sailed through an active volcano?" The chicken added.

"That one not be counting either!"

"What about the one were you said you sailed across the entire desert by yourself?" The rabbit chimed

"Now that one was being a true story!" Foxy said slightly proud in his words.

"There's no way you did something like that!" The chicken told him.

"Of course I've done just what ye said I did!" The fox declared. "Ye can't be proving me wrong if ye weren't there!"

"Now, now. There's no reason to be fighting." The bear said to the others. "Why don't we all just set back and let Foxy tell his story?"

"I'd be happy to oblige for ya!" Foxy announced, before back to face the collective pile of children sitting in front of him. "Now then, today I'd be telling ya one of me finest, greatest, and most famous tales of all! I'd be finding meself on the hunt of one of the most valuable treasures ever to grace the ocean floor!" One so sought over, and so desired by every pirate known to man that it cost me own hand an' eye!" He rose his hook up for everyone to see, and a gasp could be heard from the audience. All right, I'll admit it. I wanted to see where this story was going. "That's right! Today, I be telling the story of how I, Captain Foxy, found the greatest treasure of all, the legendary K-!"

"So desired by every pirate known to man that it cost me own hand an' eye!" Foxy immediately stopped talking and shifted its head to face our table. I couldn't even begin to tell you how wide my eyes got and how tense my expression was when I saw the robot's gaze suddenly snap towards our direction in what had to be less than a second, seemingly out of nowhere. I was hoping that his attention had been pointed towards the stage, maybe for a joke or something, but no, his eyes… er, eye, was aimed directly at where we were sitting. It was honestly terrifying, seeing him shift so instantly without any warning, the room suddenly turning dead silent as it did so and from the corner of my eye I could tell everyone else were having the same reaction to this. Well, everyone except the one seeing directly across from me, the place where the voice had come from. The place… where Hat Kid was standing on her chair, turned around to face the stage. I was a little caught off guard at first, since I thought one of the other robots had spoken for a second realizing the voice didn't match any of them, but then I realized, not only was it Hat Kid talking, which she hadn't done up until now, but also, Oh my god! She had to have had the most adorable voice I've ever heard in my life! I couldn't really make her out behind the chair, but I could see she was holding her right hand up, clenched save for her biggest finger, which was bent slightly, almost looking to mimic Foxy's hook hand. If I had to take a guess, I'd assume she also had her right eye shut. Was she trying to copy Foxy?

"Oi!" The Fox shouted without warning. "What you'd be think you'd be doing?"

"What you'd be think you'd be doing?" Hat Kid copied in her best impression of the robot. Me and the others at the table all exchanged nervous glances. While I couldn't help but admit it was kinda funny listening to her poke fun at the pirate obnoxiously overdone accent, the other 90% was beyond dumbfounded that the robot had not only noticed her, but also stopped and recognized that she was copying him, almost like this was planned or something, but that couldn't be right. We only just met her like ten minutes ago, and since she came from space, she wouldn't know this place at all. Hell, Sayori had to spell out what was on her plate in the first place. Beside that, these robots shouldn't even be able to do something like that… right? Damnit, Protag better have a good explanation for all this when they get back.

"You best better not be copying me now Buccaneer, or I'll be having ya walk the plank!" Foxy continued, now having fully turned to face us

"You best better not be copying me now Buccaneer, or I'll be having ya walk the plank!"

"That's enough out of ya! Any more yapping, and I'll have ya booty cast into the depths of Davy Jones's locker!"

"That's enough out of ya! Any more yapping, and I'll have ya booty cast into the depths of Davy Jones's locker!"

"Grrrrrr…" The robot was definitely getting frustrated with her now, and I was starting to get worried something was going to happen to her. Thankfully, it sounded like the other kids were losing it over what was happen, taking Foxy's attention away from his copycat. I guess they thought it was just part of the act, some even started to copy Foxy themselves, and none of the employees looked to be surprised by this either. Was this something that always happened here?

"So you be thinking that was funny, aye? That this be some kind of joke to ya?"

"You gotta admit, Foxy. It is pretty funny. Not many talk quite like you do." The girl voice from the stage spoke.

"Ar, If I were ya, I'd be thankful I be no longer be in me prime." Foxy commented, still obviously annoyed by what just happened, before turning back towards the crowd once more. "Once, I'd be known as the greatest pirate on the seven seas. Landlubbers and Sailors alike would shake in their boots at the very mention of me name! Why, there only be one other in the whole ocean who dared to challenge me mighty vessel, the _Cadmean Vixen. _That be the very story I'd be telling ya today!" Everyone stopped their discussions to focus on Foxy's story, including Hat Kid, who I could hear quietly chuckling to herself.

"It be some time ago when this happened. Me and me crew were on the hunt for the Kingdom Stone, a relic as old as time, said to have been passed down through the ages, and rumored to contain power the likes of which had never graced the seas before. I be knowing every pirate from old Brineybeard to the Pirate Master himself would be after a treasure so valuable, so I be making sure that I'd be claiming it for meself. Our voyage took the Vixen to the edge of the world itself, the treasure be guarded by the most fearsome ghouls, skeletons and monsters ye could ever fathom. Me crew and I barely managed to escape before the whole island plunged into the depths of the seas, never to be seen again." The audience gasped and awed as the pirate told his story. I honestly found myself really starting to get into this now, the last thing I expected to happen when we first walked in.

"Aye, we only just made out with the stone, and we be out there thinking that would be the last of it, but as it would to be believed, me ship ain't the only vessel that made their way there. There be another trying to get their mitts on me stone, and it be turning out to be..." Then, Foxy stopped for a moment.

"What's wrong?" The Rabbit asked him. "Did ya forget the rest of your story?"

"N-No!" Foxy snapped. "A pirate never be forgetting his own stories!" I just be doing a little thinking is all. I be telling this story for so long, the same way every time, and I be thinking it be time for a change. The little lass there be giving me an idea. I think this tale be better told, with a volunteer!" A lot of mumbling came from the audience as he said this, some confused, but most sounded interested about this suggestion.

"That's a great idea, Foxy!" The bear stated. "It's always to work together with others!"

"Aye, ye heard that right!" The fox replied. "Now I want ya all to give me yar best pirate voice, and however I think be the best gets to be part of me tale!" I thought they were loud before, but now the crowd just went completely nuts. Every single kid was now screaming and yelling as they started trying to copy Foxy's accent. I'll be blunt, basically all of them were completely terrible, but out of everyone, one did stick to me, but it wasn't coming from the audience."

"Yar, I be asking to join your crew, Captain Foxy!" It was coming from our table, but it wasn't Hat Kid's voice from earlier. Could that be… Sayori's impression? Sure enough, she was up off her chair, trying her own hand at the voice.

"What are you doing?" I asked her, trying to yell over the dozens of screaming kids.

"Aye, Landlubber Natsuki. I'd be trying me hand at that pirate impression challenge." Bless her heart, I know she was trying, but…

"I'm sorry, but that has to be the least threatening impression I've heard in my life." Sayori's expression quickly as she stared at the ground. Yea, that came out a lot harsher than I thought it would. I gotta save this fast. "N-not that it sounded bad of course, but it doesn't quite have the menace that a pirate voice would normally have. I mean, pirate voices are always kinda loud and intense, they always have this growl and this kinda… force behind it that makes it so you know that they mean business."

"Really? I thought pirates were always really goofy." Sayori perked up as she stated with a confused tone.

"Not at all." I heard Yuri chime in. "Pirates were seen as criminals back during the 1600's. They would murder, rape, steal and burn down entire villages in their twisted games. Commoners back then were scared of pirates, and they needed to have that menacing voice to make sure that everyone understood exactly who they were. They wanted their names to be remembered, and their voice, as well as their actions, was part of how they achieved that." Wow, I wasn't expecting her to know this much. Sayori thought to herself for a moment, then suddenly looked at me with a smug expression.

"Well, what would a threatening voice sound like then, hmm? Probably not something cute like you do, Natsuki." Sayori asked, sitting back down in her seat. Did… did she just?

"Oh, you want a pirate voice? I'll give you a pirate voice!" I snapped, standing up from my seat and slamming my hands onto the table with a loud 'thud', as I glared directly into her eyes, her face keeping that smug look only set me off even more. I took a deep breath, then I started slowly making my way over the other side of the table where she sat, never once taking my eyes off her.

"So you think ye to be the most fearsome pirate in all the seven seas?! You be not having what it takes to last even a single day on open waters! A pirate be having to learn to survive in the harshest of tides, facing the deadliest of creatures, lasting for weeks on end with nothing but rum in yar gullet and forever be on the run from all who would rather see ya dead! Otherwise sealing yar fate to be forever forgotten at the bottom of the ocean, never to be thought of again! What would someone like ye want from a pirate's life anyway? Fame? Fortune? Fresh meat to serve your crew? Nay, a real Pirate seeks to carve their names into the minds of all who'd be having the honor of meeting em. Eye. to. Eye." I made it to where Sayori was sitting, spun her chair around, and planted myself directly in her face, her composure slowly breaking as my hardened gaze shot into her own, as she tried to lean back in her seat.

"So let me be asking ye one last time. Do you think ye to be the most fearsome pirate in all the seven seas?! Well, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong, and I'd be knowing just that, for you see… you'd be looking right at her." Pulling myself back from a stunned Sayori, I crossed my arms and gave her a smug grin of my own.

"How's that for a pirate voice, hmm?" For a moment, no one said anything. In fact, from what I could tell, the entire building went quiet during my speech. It was honestly kinda creepy, seeing as just moments ago I could barely hear my own voice, now suddenly being dead silent to the point I could make out each breath I took as I recovered from the outburst I just gave Sayori. She just simply stared at me for a second, her face still in that shocked expression, as if she was still processing what she just heard.

"That…was… AMAZING!" She suddenly leaped up and wrapped in arms around me so tight I swear my ribs were gonna break. "I knew you could do it!" She knew I could-

"Aye, I think we be having ourselves a winner there." The robot fox stated out loud.

Son of a bitch, she set me up!

"Come 'ere, don't be shy." Foxy said to me, waving his non-hook hand in my direction. "Stand by me side, so that we may be telling this story together." Breaking out of Sayori's grasp, I looked over at the club, each of them giving me their own comforting smiles and encouraging 'go get 'em' hand gestures. Though I'll admit I was a little nervous, I turned back around and made my way to the left side of the pirate's stage. As I did, I noticed a couple of things. First, I could hear some people talking in the crowd. I couldn't exactly make out what they were saying, but I had the impression that whatever they were talking about, it was about me. Probably thinking I was too old looking to be doing this or whatever. I mean, I didn't exactly think I would end up doing this either, but seeing all of the eyes staring at me as I stood next to the robot fox did make me a but tense. Second, good god, this robot was huge! It easily had about a head and a half over me in size, even without the stage making it seem even taller. Third, it smelled like something died over here, it was disgusting! Do they never wash these things?!

"Welcome aboard, young lassie." Foxy told me, turning his head and upper body to face my direction. "Do ya be having a name I can call ya?"

"Natsuki, and for the record, I'm 18."

"Aye, me apologizes, I be keeping that in mind." Foxy turned back to the crowd. "Now then, without any further interruptions, let us be continuing the tale!" The crowd started cheering again as the music came back and the sounds of waves crashing began to play over the speaker. "Now where was I… ah, of course, I be just getting me hands on the Kingdom Stone with the help of me crew and me mighty ship, the _Cadmean Vixen. _Just as we be thinking we could rest after barely escaping the island with our lives…

"Cap'n, ship coming from the starboard bow!" The rabbit yelled from the other stage, catching me off guard, since I wasn't expecting them to talk at all. I guess their meant to be his crew then.

"Aye, I see her!" Foxy replied. "That be the same vessel who be trying to take the Kingdom Stone from us, the… uh…" I had to think about this myself for a second, but it didn't take long for a name to come to mind.

"The _Neko-Kiba_!" I declared.

"A fine name, that be! But now is not the time to be quaking. Get this ship moving!"

"Aye, aye cap'n!" Freddy yelled. The sound of footsteps against the wood and the sails of a ship flapping in the winds was added to the sounds coming from the speakers. "I once believed me ship to be the fastest vessel on the seven seas, but the Kiba be approaching fast, and began to fire upon us!" Cannon shots rang through the speakers. "I couldn't be believing me eyes, not only had this ship caught to me own, but it be firing right at us without hesitation. For the longest time, I thought meself to be the most fearsome pirate of the seas, and now this ship be trying to claim that title for themselves! Of course, that not be stopping this captain from backing down so easily, so we be wasting no time in firing back! The battle was long, the sounds of cannons firing and ship being smashed apart will never leave me ears after that day, but alas, it didn't take long for captain Natsuki to find her way onto me ship, seeking the Kingdom Stone for herself!" More sounds of cannon blasts, gun being fired and ships being smashed blared from the speakers and- Hang on, did I just hear that right?

"Wait, I'm the captain?" I asked

"Aye, of course. Why wouldn't ya be?" Foxy told me. "Now, what will ya be saying to try and intimidate me, eh?" Okay, this was not what I was thinking was going to happen. Not only did I get stuck up here by complete accident, and in the front of at least a hundred pairs of eyes, but now I also had to make up my lines on the spot. Fantastic. I took a deep breath.

"_Alright." _I thought to myself, "_Let's see what I can do with this." _After a short pause, I cleared my throat and announced what I had come up with.

"Captain Foxy!" I declared aloud. "I'd be hearing you've gotten your hands on quite the treasure as of late! It took me some time to find ya, but now I be thinking you'd best be handing over the stone to me, before I'd be having to leave this ship a wreck!"

"Har har har!" Foxy laughed. "I'd not be giving up the stone so easily! You'd be dealing with me now, lass, so you'd best be turning back now if ya know what's good for ya!"

"I'd not be leaving without the stone!" I shouted back. "Even if it means blasting this ship to pieces!"

"Very well. To the locker with ya!" Foxy roared, and the sounds the swords clashing took over the speakers, showing that we were supposed to be fighting. "I struck first, the force of me blade striking her own nearly sent her over the port bow, but it took no time before the tides were quickly turned against me. I found meself on the defensive, carefully blocking every blow the aggressive Natsuki swung at me just mere seconds before I be losing more than just the stone!" As Foxy described what was happening between us, I found myself surprisingly getting lost in the moment. I imagined myself there, on that ship, clashing swords with the fox, hearing the sounds that fell from the speakers, and seeing myself in pirate gear, a white dress shirt with a light pink vest, boots, leggings and a large hat. Before this, I never thought I would be so invested in this story, but now, standing here next to the stage and acting alongside the robot, there was a part of me that felt… warm. I couldn't describe it, but it felt… comforting, like something I never really felt until now. It was the weirdest thing, but at the same time, it also just felt… right.

"Argh!" Foxy suddenly yelled, his hook hand rising up in an attempt to cover his patched eye. "One false step on me end and her blade be finding its way right through me right eye!" The audience and the other characters all gasped as this fact. I was actually a little surprised myself. I never thought I would be the reason he lost his eye. The fox then put his hand down and turned back to me. "But I not be letting one minor wound get in me way. The stone be staying with me!"

"I'll tear that stone from ya hands if I have to!" I shouted back. The sounds of clashing swords came back.

"Even with only a single eye, our battle was being just as fierce as before. I'd be putting up the fight of me life, but Natsuki forced me back, knocking me into me captains quarters, and as I be trying to bring meself back to me feet, she quickly slashed off me right hand!" Hot damn, I was on a winning streak in this story. I really hoped I would keep this up.

"How many more before ye give me what I want?" I threaten him.

"Aye, ya beaten me, I be admitting that. But I'm afraid that I be still the victor this day."

"What?!" I questioned suddenly, completely breaking my pirate voice in surprise. "You're down an eye and a hand, and I literally have you on the floor. How do you still win?"

"Har har har." He laughed once more. "Ya might have me defeated, but even if ya get the stone, how 'r ya gonna be leaving 'ere without a ship?"

"Huh? But I already have a ship. What are you on about?" Foxy laughed ever harder at this comment.

"While you be busy fighting me for the stone, I be taking the liberty of having me crew here on the cannons. If ya hurry, there still may be a ship left by the time ya be getting there." He gestured to the other robots on the main stage.

"N-no fair!" I exclaimed.

"Aye, in the end, while I lost me eye and hand that day, the stone still be mine for the keeping, the lesson today being while ya might be focused on a single task, it be also just as important to be keeping yar mind aware of all the other important things of ya lifes, otherwise they might be getting ya into trouble." Of course there had to be some sort of cheesy message at the end, I guess this was for kids after all. I'm just annoyed I got jipped out of my win.

"And with that, I be taking my leave for the time being." A loud 'aww' come from the crowd of children. "But don't be worrying, I'd be back before ya know it. The seas call me name once more. Before I be leaving however, why don't we all be giving a big round of hook 'n hand to our guest volunteer, Captain Natsuki of the _Neko Kiba_!" It was the strangest feeling, seeing all of those people clapping for me, almost like nothing I had ever felt before. I felt a singer tear rolling down my cheek, which I quickly wiped away. Just seeing these people, genuinely happy for me was…unbelievable.

"Until we meet again, I be bidding ya all farewell!" Foxy announced as the curtains closed in front of him. The stock music began blaring, and the clapping continued for a while in after I made my way back to our table, but it wasn't long before everything sounded the way it did when we first came in.

"That was so cool! You were awesome, Natsuki!" Said an overjoyed Sayori. Still wasn't thrilled that she tricked me into doing it, but I guess I'm thankful for it at least.

"Great job out there!" Monika chimed in. "Who knew you had it in you?"

"You did well." Yuri told me. "What was it like, being up there next to them?"

"Well, I'll admit, I actually didn't have that bad of a time. The robots seem nice, and I guess I'm happy people enjoyed it at least."

"Say, did anyone see where Protag went?" Monika suddenly asked.

And my good mood just got thrown right out the window.

"Yea, they just left suddenly." Sayori said. "But I'm not sure where they went…"

Before we could say anything else, we suddenly heard a loud, angry outburst come from the other side of the restaurant.

"For the last time, there is NOTHING wrong with his establishment! Whatever you're on about never happened here! Now leave me alone!"

"Please sir!" I heard Protag cry out. "I just need to ask you a few things."

"I don't wanna hear about you or any of your conspiracies, so get out!"

"Please I-" Protag began to frantically look around, as the man they were talking to turn around into what looked like his office, and he was about to shut the door before Protag suddenly yelled out.

"I'll take your night shift!"

Protag's POV

His hands never slapped my mouth shut faster in my entire life. I know I shouldn't have said that, but I wasn't thinking straight and I couldn't stop myself in time. I just saw the help wanted poster hanging next to the door and the words came out without me having any time to process what I was saying. Just as I finished saying those fateful words, I could instantly feel, no not hear, Feel, the building suddenly go completely quiet. Nobody made a single noise, save for the kids, who stopped running around to question what has happened, and the animatronics… oh god, I know they were already creepy back when I played the games, but seeing them like this, in the same room as me, with those cold, lifeless stares, filled me with a sense of dread so overflowing I swear I could start sweating in it. Even Foxy, who had just closed his curtains, I could see peeking through to stare directly at me. Horrifying would be too light of a word to describe the feeling it gave me, but I couldn't think about it for more than a few moments, as I suddenly felt myself getting pulled from behind into the manager's office, said manager quickly shutting the door as he did so. The room he brought me into was just as depressing looking as the rest of the building, with only a few old, wooden shelves, drawers and a single desk which housed a computer, a flat screen monitor, an old radio clock, a couple of wooden chairs, each of which we sat on and a picture of the manager with what looked to be his wife and daughter.

"So uh, sorry about earlier." He apologized, scratching the back of his head. "Normally I don't get that angry" Then suddenly he got a lot more serious in expression. "But I'm curious. Just... how much do you know?" I honestly wasn't expecting that question, given how stern he was just a moment ago about none of those stories being real. I know I couldn't tell him the complete truth, but I could try wording it in a way that would still be accurate.

"I've… done a bit of research, and I came across a lot of those stories and rumors that people would pass around on the internet. I came here…" Crap, can't say that. Gotta have another excuse. "because I just wanted to know the truth. Are they-"

"Real?" He paused for a moment. "...yea. Every single one of them." He confirmed, calmer and more quiet than before. "I'll be honest, I'm surprised so many people still even come to these restaurants, given how…" He looked over at the picture on his desk. "This company is cursed." I chose to stay silent as he spoke. He took a deep sigh. "I can't even begin to recall how many have gone missing since this brand first started, how many lawsuits we've swept under the rug, how many… accidents we've had. The animatronics… just stopped acting right after a while and, if he were to come back, after we all ended up in this place... I couldn't begin to imagine what could happen. That's why we need you for tonight. We can't risk anything happening like that again. Once your shift starts, nothing can get in... and nothing can get out. Are you sure you're able to handle that?" I didn't know what to say. I mean, I understood what I had to do to get through it, but actually being there, in that room for six hours, and if I screw up, then… I didn't want to think about it, but if my gut feeling was right and this meant possibly finding any sort of way of getting back home, then I guess I didn't have a choice. With a pinch of hesitancy, I nodded.

"Alright." He sighed, then started to stand up, extending his hand out to me. "Here. Why don't I show you around your work station." Then a thought came into my head.

"Actually, before that." I said to him. "You didn't happen to find anything… unusual recently, have you?" The manager thought for a moment, then perked up as if he remembered something.

"You know, I think I might have." He then turned around and opened up one of the drawers next to the wall and pulled out… a timepiece?

"This was sitting outside in the back just a moment ago. I've never seen anything like it before. I guess this day's just full of surprises, huh?"

"P-perfect!" I blurted out. "That's exactly what I was looking for."

"Really? Huh. Well, then that just makes things easier for us then. Tell you what, you work the full week for me, I throw this in as a bonus. What do you say?" He held his hand out to me once more. With a satisfied smile, I went ahead and accepted his extended hand for a shake that sealed the deal.

"Welcome aboard!" He declared.

...I just made the worst mistake of my life, didn't I?

Hey there! I just wanted to say thanks for reading! This chapter took a lot longer than I was expecting to write, so I hope the end result was worth it. I really wanted to make this chapter more light hearted to make up for what's to come in the next few chapters, and this chapter ended up being much harder to write as a result, as I had to focus more on character interactions this time rather than creating tense action sequences like the last couple of chapters, especially when I'm trying as hard as possible not to fall into the curse of flanderizing the girls. It was fun giving each of the animatronics their own personally though, and setting up for what's to come after this. Strangely enough though, the hardest part of this chapter wasn't the scene between Foxy and Natsuki like you might have expected, but rather trying to figure out who the waitress would be. I wanted it to be an indie game character who normally did take orders in the game they came from since not only would it give a shout out to a lesser known game, but it would also make sense in the context of the story. Originally, I wrote the scene with the character Flo from the game series 'Diner Dash' to be the groups waiter, as the company who makes those game 'Playfirst' both develop and publish the series inhouse, so I thought that would count as Indie, but upon further research, I found that not only was the company bought by 'Glu Mobile', which would by itself, make her not longer an Indie character, but that company was also partially owned by… Tencent, the same scumbags working on 'Pokemon Unite'. SO with her not being Indie, I struggled to find out who could replace her in that role, until upon digging around Steam, where I found this little game called "Carrie's Order Up!', which had exactly what I was looking for. You can find the game here if you're interested app/522490/Carries_Order_Up/.

Until then, thanks again for reading, and be ready for when the night falls… they'll be waiting.


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